












Class i _ ■ 

Book. .. B 1 S k 
Copyright N?__ 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 










A CANTICLE 
OF THE YEAR 


A Birthday Boo\for Girls 


Edited by 

ELVIRA J. SLACK 


The Womans Press 


1920 














Copyright, 1920, by 

The National Board of the Young Womens Christian Associations 
of the United States of America 
New York 


JAN 14 1922 


©Cl. A6 54 281 

</ Wo / 


TO 

A FRIEND OF GIRLS 

JENNIE F. HENDRIE 







A PREFACE 


BIRTHDAY is a yearly * ‘ Good Morning ’ ’ to the fairies 



who brought you, a day when perhaps you are most 
nearly your real self. To have come into so beautiful a 
world was a miracle in itself; and every birthday renews 
that association. When you came, you were in very truth a 
gift, and I like to think that on one’s birthday we re¬ 
possess our heritage; that is why a birthday may be said 
to partake of the self-same stuff as miracles. 

When we were children we used to play a game in which 
you held your hands shut tight until the leader came 
around to you and said: “Hold fast all that I give unto 
you,” crowding something new into your tight little fists. 
So this book of quotations, chosen arbitrarily, says the same 
magic words, bringing to you things new and old; and 
all the poets standing in the circle, come one by one and 
put some one beautiful thing that he has seen, into your 
opened hands. 

The design of this book is to make your whole year into a 
canticle or song, and for that reason an old canticle of the 
church is put to singing as a sort of refrain in which 
there are many voices of neighborly things. It has been 
planned also that the book should be simple in order 
that you might use it in many ways; as a record of the 
birthdays of your friends—you will find some already re¬ 
corded—or with spacious margins in which to write quota¬ 
tions of your own choice. Or it may be possible to turn 
the book into a bird-record or a flower-record, or a diary 
of things happening that you might like to recall. Not one 
day need pass as poor or unenriched, with so many quota¬ 
tions that you might memorize. Further, when you are in a 
“behind-the-door ” mood, you may look in the back of the 


v 


book for information as to the books in which these lines 
may be found; the majority of these authors do not step 
often into the schoolroom lest they interrupt the painful 
processes of acquiring knowledge; but they belong, every 
one, in the group of your friends. 

The ship on the cover is an old Celtic symbol of immortal¬ 
ity,—for a year is but a single voyage, and there are 
others to come; may this book bring to your next voyage 
smoother seas and bluer skies. 

E. J. S. 


vi 


A BIRTHDAY is one whose dawn and sunset are one’s 
very own.” 


A CANTICLE—BENEDICITE, OMNIA OPERA DOMINI 


O ALL ye Works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: 

praise him and magnify him forever. 

O ye Angels of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: 

praise him and magnify him forever. 

0 ye Heavens, bless ye the Lord: 

praise him and magnify him forever. 

O ye Waters that be above the firmament, bless ye the Lord: 

praise him and magnify him forever. 

O all ye Powers of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: 

praise him and magnify him forever. 

O ye Sun and Moon, bless ye the Lord: 

praise him and magnify him forever. 

O ye Stars of heaven, bless ye the Lord: 

praise him and magnify him forever. 

O ye Showers and Dew, bless ye the Lord: 

praise him and magnify him forever. 

O ye Winds of God, bless ye the Lord: 

praise him and magnify him forever. 

O ye Fire and Heat, bless ye the Lord: 

praise him and magnify him forever. 

O ye Winter and Summer, bless ye the Lord: 

praise him and magnify him forever. 

O ye Dews and Frosts, bless ye the Lord: 

praise him and magnify him forever. 

O ye Frost and Cold, bless ye the Lord: 

praise him and magnify him forever. 

O ye Ice and Snow, bless ye the Lord: 

praise him and magnify him forever. 

O ye Nights and Days, bless ye the Lord: 

praise him and magnify him forever. 

O ye Light and Darkness, bless ye the Lord: 
praise him and magnify him forever. 

viii 


O ye Lightnings and Clouds, bless ye the Lord: 
praise him and magnify him forever. 

O let the Earth bless the Lord: 

yea, let it praise him and magnify him forever. 

O ye Mountains and Hills, bless ye the Lord: 
praise him and magnify him forever. 

O all ye Green Things upon the earth, bless ye the Lord: 
praise him and magnify him forever. 

O ye Wells, bless ye the Lord: 

praise him and magnify him forever. 

O ye Seas and Floods, bless ye the Lord: 
praise him and magnify him forever. 

O ye Whales, and all that move in the waters, bless ye the 
Lord: 

praise him and magnify him forever. 

O all ye Fowls of the air, bless ye the Lord: 
praise him and magnify him forever. 

O all ye Beasts and Cattle, bless ye the Lord: 
praise him and magnify him forever. 

O ye Children of Men, bless ye the Lord: 
praise him and magnify him forever. 

O let Israel bless the Lord: 

praise him and magnify him forever. 

0 ye Priests of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: 
praise him and magnify him forever. 

O ye Servants of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: 
praise him and magnify him forever. 

O ye Spirits and Souls of the Righteous, bless ye the Lord: 
praise him and magnify him forever. 

O ye holy and humble Men of heart, bless ye the Lord: 
praise him and magnify him forever. 


AMEN. 



























































































































































































• * 




























JANUARY 


ALL ye Works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: 
praise him and magnify him forever. 

O ye Angels of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: 
praise him and magnify him forever. 


/ 


I 




JANUARY’S MAGIC 

Jg ARE ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. ’ ’ 


2 



January 1 

ANOTHER YEAR 


T^ARTH giveth unto us 
Another year 
Miraculous 

Her beauty to behold, 

Her dreams of rose and gold, 
New starlight to enfold 
Our dreaming sphere. 

Love giveth unto us 
Another year 
Of marvellous 
Ointments for weary feet, 

A shadow from the heat, 

Home welcomes and heart-sweet 
Communion dear. 

Christ giveth unto us 
Another year 
Of burdenous 

Tasks, blessed for His sake, 
World’s pity to awake. 

To bind up hearts that break 
Beside us here. 

Hope giveth unto us 
Another year 
Adventurous 

To follow the climbing Good, 
By thorn and beast withstood, 
To heightsof brotherhood, 
Through dim to clear. 


3 


God giveth unto us 
Another year 
All luminous 

With Him, our shining Source, 

Divine, redeeming Force, 

Of life’s bewildered course 
Still charioteer. 

Katharine Lee Bates. 

Reprinted by permission from ‘ ‘America the Beautiful 
and Other Poems,” by Katharine Lee Bates, copy¬ 
right by Thomas Y. Crowell and Company. 




4 


January 2 

THE SUNLIT SEA 

T HERE is a far-away blue sea of unending wonder and be¬ 
lief. A fragile craft is launched from a Mother’s arms, 
upon its waters. You are the helmsman of the vessel and 
you are the guardian. 

Safely through tempests and gales and over stretches of 
sunlit water you must pilot the ship. The path is strewn 
with icebergs, wreckage and many boats making for the 
same harbor. All the little boats make their trial voyage 
through the white-capped, dancing waves of “Let’s Play” 
and * 1 Let’s Pretend. ’ ’ 

Back into the bay of youth, where lies the haven of a 
Mother’s arms, each little vessel will drift if the pilot 
does not stupidly keep his wheel turned to the point on the 
compass that reads Grow-up-South by As-fast-as-you-ccm- 
East. The craft laden with a cargo, that is your heart, 
will surely return to the pleasant waters of youth unless 
you are grown up so high you cannot become as a little 
child. 

Dug aid Stewart Walker. 


5 


January 3 

HHHAT the being of me have room to grow, 

That my eyes may meet God's eyes and know, 

I will hew great windows, wonderful windows, measureless 
windows for my soul. 

Angela Morgan. 



6 


January 4 

HAND IN HAND WITH ANGELS 


H AND in hand with angels. 

Through the world we go: 

Brighter eyes are on us 
Than we blind ones know; 

Tenderer voices cheer us 
Than we deaf will own: 

Never, walking heavenward, 

Can we walk alone. 

Hand in hand with angels, 

In the busy street, 

By the winter hearth-fires,— 

Everywhere,—we meet, 

Though unfledged and songless, 

Birds of Paradise; 

Heaven looks at us daily 
Out of human eyes. 

Lucy Larcom 


7 


January 5 

TO A NEW-BORN BABY GIRL 


N OW have we seen by early sun. 

Thy miracle of life begun. 

All breathing and aware thou art, 

With beauty templed in thy heart 
To let thee recognise the thrill 
Of wings along far azure hill, 

And hear within the hollow sky 
Thy friends the angels rushing by. 

These shall recall that thou hast known 
Their distant country as thine own, 

To spare thee word of vales and streams, 

And publish heaven through thy dreams. 

Grace Hazard Conlcling. 


8 


January 6 


TAEBOBAH, put the blue and gold 
And rosy beauty that is you, 

Into your heart that it may hold 
Beauty to last your whole life through. 

Aline Kilmer. 


9 


January 7 
DEEAMS 

I F there were dreams to sell 
What would you buy? 

Some cost a passing bell; 

Some a light sigh, 

That shakes from Life’s fresh crown 
Only a rose-leaf down. 

If there were dreams to sell, 

Merry and sad to tell, 

And the crier rang the bell. 

What would you buy? 

Thomas Beddoes, 1803-1849, 


10 


January 8 

FROST WORK 

T HESE winter nights against my window pane, 

Nature with busy pencil draws designs 
Of ferns and blossoms, and fine sprays of pines, 

Oak-leaf and acorn and fantastic vines, 

Which she will make when summer comes again, 

Quaint arabesques in argent, flat and cold, 

Like curious Chinese etchings.—By and by, 

Walking my leafy garden as of old, 

These frosty fantasies shall charm my eye, 

In azure, damask, emerald, and gold. 

Thomas Bailey Aldrich. 


11 


January 9 

LEARNED IN THE SCHOOL OF THE TRENCHES 

T HEY learn to trust each other, and to look for the 
essential qualities rather than for the accidental 
graces . . . 

It was their chance. With a gay heart they gave their 
greatest gift, and with a smile to think that after all they 
had anything to give which was of value. One by one 
Death challenged them. One by one they smiled in his 
grim visage, and refused to be dismayed. They had been 
lost, but they had found the path that led them home; 
and when at last they laid their lives at the feet of the 
Good Shepherd, what could they do but smile? 

Donald Eanlcey. 

Taken by permission from ‘ 1 A Student in Arms, , 1 by Donald 
Hankey, copyrighted by E. P. Dutton and Company, 
New York. 


12 


January 10 

FROM HIS LETTERS TO THE SOLDIERS OF THE 
AMERICAN ARMY 

L ET it be your pride, therefore, to show all men every¬ 
where not only what good soldiers you are, but also 
what good men you are, keeping yourselves fit and strong 
in everything and pure and clean through and through. Let 
us set for ourselves a standard so high that it will be a 
glory to live up to it and then let us live up to it and add 
a new laurel to the crown of America. 

Woodrow Wilson. 


13 


January 11 


T O be alive in such an age! 

To live to it! 

To give to it! 

Rise, soul, from thy despairing knees. 

What if thy lips have drunk the lees? 

The passion of a larger claim 
Will put thy puny grief to shame. 

Fling forth thy sorrow to the wind 
And link thy hope with humankind; 

Breathe the world-thought, do the world-deed, 

Think highly of thy brother’s need. 

And what thy woe, and what thy weal? 

Look to the work the times reveal! 

Give thanks with all thy flaming heart, 

Crave but to have in it a part. 

Give thanks and clasp thy heritage— 

To be alive in such an age! 

Angela Morgan. 



14 


January 12 

T HE only thing in the world worth being is oneself, 
even with all oneself’s limitations. 

E. V. Lucas. 


15 


January 13 

I’M NOBODY 

I ’M nobody! Who are you? 

Are you nobody, too? 

Then, there’s a pair of us,—don’t tell! 

They’d banish us, you know. 

How dreary to be somebody! 

How public, like a frog, 

To tell your name the livelong day 
To an admiring bog. 

Emily Dickinson. 

Reprinted by permission of the publishers from “ Poems,” 
by Emily Dickinson; copyright by Little, Brown and 
Company. 


16 


January 14 

FROM LOUISA M. ALCOTT’S JOURNAL 

I WROTE in my imagination book and enjoyed it very 
much. Life is pleasanter than it used to be,—and I 
don’t care about dying any more. Had a splendid run, and 
got a box of cones to burn. Sat and heard the pines sing a 
long time. Had good dreams and woke now and then to 
think and watch the moon. I had a pleasant time with 
my mind, for it was happy. 

(Aged ten years.) 


17 


January 15 

IN A FRENCH DIARY 


T O-DAY begins a new year. It will be the year of 
victory. What will it mean for me? The greatest year 
of my life, surely, if God grant that I survive. . . . What¬ 
ever destiny may be awaiting me, I shall waste no time 
thinking about the future. I confess I said to myself this 
morning, “What will be left of me when still another year 
has taken the place of this one?” But my conscience quickly 
replied, “Do your duty, your whole duty. That is the only 
thought worthy of a volunteer soldier like yourself.” A 
man must hold up to himself some great dream to follow, 
some goal to reach. . . . 

I am proud of being a soldier, of being young, of know¬ 
ing that I am brave and high-spirited; I am proud of 
serving France, the land of my birth. Loyalty to the flag, 
love of country, respect for the given word, /the sense of 
honor,—these for me are no hollow, meaningless phrases; 
they ring like a bugle-call in my young heart, and for them 
when the moment comes, I shall be able to make the supreme 
sacrifice. 

Dated January 1, 1916, and written by a French soldier 
who died for France at the age of eighteen. Quoted 
from Maurice Barres. 


18 


January 16 

THE WAYS 


T O every man there openeth 

A Way, and Ways, and a Way. 

And the High Soul climbs the High way, 
And the Low Soul gropes the Low, 

And in between, on the misty flats, 

The rest drift to and fro. 

But to every man there openeth 
A High Way, and a Low. 

And every man decideth 
The Way his soul shall go. 


John Oxenham. 


19 


January 17 

T O set the cause above renown. 

To love the game beyond the prize. 

To honor, while you strike him down, 

The foe that comes with fearless eyes; 

To count the life of battle good, 

And dear the land that gave you birth, 

And dearer yet the brotherhood 

That binds the brave of all to earth. 

Henry Newbolt. 


20 


January 18 

THE KNIGHT ERRANT 

S PIRITS of old that bore me. 

And set me, meek of mind, 

Between great dreams before me. 

And deeds as great behind, 

Knowing humanity my jdar 
As first abroad I ride, 

Shall help me wear with every sear 
Honor at eventide. 

I fear no breathing bowman, 

But only, east and west, 

The awful other foeman 
Impowered in my breast. 

The outer fray in the sun shall be. 

The inner beneath the moon; 

And may our Lady lend to me 
Sight of the Dragon soon! 

Louise Imogen Guiney. 


21 


January 19 

O F wounds and sore defeat 
I made my battle stay; 

Winged sandals for my feet 
I wove of my delay; 

Of weariness and fear, 

I made my shouting spear; 

Of loss, and doubt, and dread, 

And swift oncoming doom 
I made a helmet for my head 
And a floating plume. 

From the shutting mist of death, 

From the failure of the breath, 

I made a battle-liorn to blow 
Across the vales of overthrow. 

0 hearken, love, the battle-horn! 

The triumph clear, the silver scorn! 

O hearken where the echoes bring, 

Down the grey disastrous morn, 

Laughter and rallying! 

William Vaughn Moody. 


22 


January 20 

N O cheating or bargaining will ever get a single thing out 
of Nature’s establishment at half-price. Do we want 
to be strong? we must work. To be hungry? we must starve. 
To be happy? we must be kind. To be wise? we must look 
and think. 

John Euslcin. 


\ 


23 


January 21 

KEEP PURE THY SOUL 

K EEP pure thy soul I 

Then shalt thou take the whole 
Of delight, 

Then, without a pang, 

Thine shall be all of beauty whereof the poet sang— 
The perfume, and the pageant, the melody and the mirth 
Of the golden day, and the starry night; 

Of heaven, and of the earth. 

Oh, keep pure thy soul! 

Richard Watson Gilder. 


24 


January 22 

THE SHEPHERDESS 


OHE walks—the lady of my delight— 

^ A shepherdess of sheep. 

Her flocks are* thoughts. She keeps them white; 

She guards them from the steep. 

She feeds them on the fragrant height, 

And folds them in for sleep. 

She roams maternal hills and bright. 

Dark valleys safe and deep. 

Her dreams are innocent at night; 

The chastest stars may peep. 

She walks—the lady of my delight— 

A shQpherdess of sheep. 

She holds her little thoughts in sight, 

Though gay they run and leap. 

She is so circumspect and right; 

She has her soul to keep. 

She walks—the lady of my delight— 

A shepherdess of sheep. 

Alice Meynell 


25 


January 23 

MERLIN AND THE GLEAM 


T hrough the magic 

Of Him the Mighty, 

Who taught me in childhood. 

There on the border 
Of boundless Ocean, 

And all but in Heaven 
Hovers the Gleam. 

Not of the sunlight! 

Not of the moonlight! 

Not of the starlight! 

O young Mariner, 

Down to the haven, 

Call your companions 
Launch your vessel 
And crowd your canvas, 

And, lest it vanish 
Over the margin, 

After it, follow it, 

Follow the Gleam. 

Alfred, Lord Tennyson. 


26 


January 24 

THE BELOVED CAPTAIN 

H IS confidence was infectious. He looked at them, and 
they looked at him, and the men pulled themselves 
together and determined to do their best. Their best'lmr- 
prised themselves. 

It was a wonderful thing, that smile of his. It was 
something worth living for, and worth working for. It 
bucked one up when one was bored and tired. It seemed 
to make one look at things from a different point of view, 
a finer point of view, his point of view. 

Donald HanTcey . 

Taken by permission from “A Student in Arms ,” by 
Donald Hankey, copyrighted by E. P. Dutton and Com¬ 
pany, New York. 


27 


January 25 

T HOU canst shut the splendor out; 

Darken every room with doubt; 

From the entering angels hide 
Under tinseled wefts of pride; # 

While the pure in heart behold 
God in every flower unfold? 

While the poor his kingdom share, 

Feigning with Him everywhere. 

Oh, let Christ and sunshine in! 

Let his love its sweet way win! 

Nothing human is too mean 
To receive the King unseen: 

Not a pleasure or a care 
But celestial robes may wear; 

Impulse, thought, and action may 
Live immortally to-day. 

Lucy Larcom. 


28 


January 26 

LOOKING-GLASS LOGIC 

T HE rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday—but 
never to-day. ” 

“It must come to jam to-day,’’ Alice objected. 

“No, it can’t,” said the Queen. “It’s jam every other 
day; to-day isn’t any other day, you know.” 


“ It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards, ’ ’ 
the Queen remarked. 

“What sort of thing do you remember best?” Alice ven¬ 
tured to ask. 

“Oh, things that happened the week after next,” the 
Queen replied in a careless tone. 

Lewis Carroll. 


29 



January 27 

A BIRTHDAY LETTER BY LEWIS CARROLL 

I NEVER give birthday presents, but you see I do some¬ 
times write a birthday letter: so, as I’ve just arrived 
here, I am writing this to wish you many and many a 
happy return of your birthday. I will drink your health, if 
only I can remember, and if you don’t mind—but perhaps 
you object? You see, if I were to sit by you at break¬ 
fast, and to drink your tea, you wouldn’t like that, would 
you? You would say, “Boo! hoo! Here’s Mr. Dodgson’s 
drunk all my tea, and I haven’t got any left!” So I am 
very much afraid, next time Sybil looks for you, she’ll find 
you sitting by the sad sea wave, an^l crying, “Boo! hoo! 
Mr. Dodgson has drunk my health, and I haven’t got any 
left! ’ ’ And how it will puzzle Dr. Maund, when he is sent 
for to see you! “My dear Madam, I’m very sorry to say 
your little girl has got no health at all! I never saw such 
a thing in my life! ” “ Oh, I can easily explain it! ” your 
mother will say. “You see she would go and make friends 
with a strange gentleman and yesterday he drank her 
health!” “Well, Mrs. Chataway, ” he will say, “the only 
way to cure her is to wait till his next birthday, and then 
for her to drink his health. ’ ’ 

And then we shall have changed healths. I wonder how 
you’ll like mine! Oh, Gertrude, I wish you wouldn’t talk 
such nonsense! 

Your loving friend, 

Lewis Carroll. 

Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), 1832-1897. 


30 


January 28 

CHINESE GORDON 

H E used no magic, and he owned no spell, 

But with keen glance, strong will, and weighty blow, 
Did one thing at a time and did it well; 

And sought no praise from men, as in God’s eye, 

Nobly to live content or nobly die. 

Some men live near to God, as my right arm 
Is near to me, and thus they walk about 
Mailed in full proof of faith, and bear a charm 
That mocks at fear, and bars the door on doubt, 

And dares the impossible. So Gordon. . . .! 

J. S. BlacHe. 


General’Charles George Gordon, 1833-1885. 


31 


January 29 
MY MOTHER 


S HE was as good as goodness is, 

Her acts and all her words were kind, 
And high above all memories 
I hold the beauty of her mind. 


Frederick Hentz Adams. 


32 


January 30 

VERY WHERE, always; 

In sunshine, in shadow; 

In j°y, in disappointment; 

In success, in defeat; 

We, the girls of America 
Follow the Gleam. 

If once we fall, 

We rise to face the light. 

If once we fail. 

We fight again to win. 

We cannot be lonely: 

We stand together. 

From north to farthest south; 

From east to distant west, 

Ours is the surest Quest. 

We know the ONE we follow. 

Emily Goding. 


33 


January 31 

EVERYMAID 


K ING’S Daughter! 

Wouldst thou be all fair, 
W itliout—within— 

Peerless and beautiful, 

A very Queen? 


Know then:— 

Not as men build unto the Silent One,— 

With clang and clamour, 

Traffic of rude voices, 

Clink of steel on stone. 

And din of hammer;— 

Not so the temple of thy grace is reared. 
But,—in the inmost shrine 
Must thou begin, 

And build with care 
A Holy Place 
A place unseen, 

Each stone a prayer. 

Then, having built. 

Thy shrine sweep bare 

Of self and sin 

And all that might demean; 

And, with endeavour, 

Watching ever, praying ever, 

Keep it fragrant-sweet and clean: 

So, by God’s grace, it be lit place,— 

His Christ shall enter and shall dwell therein. 

34 


Not as in earthly fane—where chase 
Of steel on stone may strive to win 
Some outward grace,— 

Thy temple face is chiselled from within. 

John Oxenham. 


35 





FEBRUARY 


/^\ YE Heavens, bless ye the Lord: 

praise him and magnify him forever. 

O ye Waters that be above the firmament, bless ye the Lord 
praise him and magnify him forever. 


37 


FEBRUARY’S MAGIC 

I DRANK from brooks of melting snow, 
And said good morning to a deer.” 

38 


February 1 

AN OLD IRISH LITANY 


S AINTS of Four Seasons! 

Saints of the Year! 

Loving, I pray to you; longing, I say to you: 
Save me from angers, dreeings, and dangers! 
Saints of Four Seasons! 

Saints of the Year! 

Saints of Green Springtime! 

Saints of the Year! 

Patraic and Grighair, and Brighid be near! 

My last breath gather with God's Foster Father! 
Saints of Green Springtime! 

Saints of the Year! 

Saints of Gold Summer! 

Saints of the Year! 

(Poesy wingeth me! Fancy far bringeth me!) 
Guide me on to Mary's sweet Son! 

Saints of Gold Summer! 

Saints of the Year! 


From the Feilire of Adamnan, Abbot of Iona 704 A. D. 
Patrick J. McCall. Reprinted with permission from 
11 The Irish Book of Poetry,'' by Alfred Percival 
Graves; published by Frederick A. Stokes Company. 

St. Bridget of Ireland, 525 A. D. 


39 


February 2 
HYMN 


T HE spacious firmament on high, 

With all the blue ethereal sky 
And spangled heavens, a shining frame, 

Their great original proclaim: 

Th’ unwearied sun, from day to day, 

Hoes his Creator’s power display, 

And publishes to every land, 

The work of an almighty hand. 

Soon as the evening shades prevail. 

The moon takes up the wondrous tale, 

And nightly to the listening earth 
Repeats the story of her birth: 

While all the stars that round her burn, 

And all the planets in their turn. 

Confirm the tidings as they roll. 

And spread the truth from pole to pole. . . . 

Joseph Addison , 1672-1719. 


40 


February 3 


T O-DAY comes as a friend with some serene, great Joy in 
his eyes. 

Sidney Lanier. 


Sidney Lanier, 1842-1881. 


41 


February 4 


IYE me the sky if I am to see God. 

Maurice Hewlett. 


42 


February 5 


1 LIKE to know you hear the call 
Of all things sad, neglected, small; 

Thrill to the magic of the wind. 

Love country, town and your own kind, 

Sinners and saints and sea and sky 
Just as they are, for so do I. 

Winnifred M. Letts. 

Taken by permission from 11 The Spires of Oxford and Other 
Poems ,’’ by Winnifred M. Letts, copyrighted by E. P. 
Dutton and Company, New York. 


43 


February 6 
HOPE 

W HO heard the last dying sob of winter 

Long ere the funny woolly lambs were born? 

“I,” said the Squirrel, “I, the tree sprinter, 

I stood by his bedside on a cold March morn. *’ 

Who saw the Spring come lightly tripping 
Long ere the merry, merry month of May? 

“I,” said the Lambkin, blithely skipping, 

“As she went o’er the hill she passed this way.” 

Who found the first wee Valentine of Heaven 
Long ere the jolly leafy woods were dressed? 

“I,” said the Schoolboy, “I found seven— 

Four in the undergrowth and three in a nest! ” 

Captain Cyril H. Hawker. 

By permission. From Scribner’s Magazine for April, 1919. 
Copyright, 1919, by Charles Scribner’s Sons. 


44 


February 7 


I T is a strange thing: Adventure! I looked for her 
high and I looked for her low, and she passed my door 
in a tattered garment unheeded. For I had neither the eye 
of simplicity nor the heart of humility. One day I looked 
for her anew and I saw her beckoning from the Open Road; 
and underneath the tags and tatters I caught the gleam of 
her celestial garments: and I went with her into a new 
world. 

David Grayson. 


*15 


February 8 

T HE spirit of God is around you in the air that you 
breathe; his glory in the light that you see and in the 
fruitfulness of the earth and in the joy of its creatures. He 
has written you day by day his revelation and he has 
granted you day by day your daily bread. 

John Buslcin, 1819-1900. 

Quoted on a monument erected to John Ruskin on Lake 
Derwentwater. 


46 


February 9 

F OR new, and new, and ever-new, 

The golden bud within the blue; 

And every morning seems to say: 

“ There’s something happy on the way, 

And God sends love to you ! 1 1 

Henry van DyTce. 


47 


February 10 
VICTORY IN DEFEAT 


D EFEAT may serve as well as victory 

To shake the soul and let the glory out. 

When the great oak is straining in the wind, 

The boughs drink in new beauty, and the trunk 
Sends down a deeper root on the windward side. 

Only the soul that knows the mighty grief 
Can know the mighty rapture. Sorrows come 
To stretch out spaces in the heart for joy. 

Edwin Markham. 


48 


February 11 

LI AYE the elder races halted 

*■ ^ Do they droop and end their lesson, 

Wearied, over there beyond the seas? 

We take up the task eternal, and the burden, and the lesson, 
Pioneers! O pioneers! 

All the past we leave behind; 

We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world; 
Fresh and strong the world we seize, 

World of labor and the march, 

Pioneers! O pioneers! 


Walt Whitman . 


February 12 

LINCOLN, THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE 

HEN the Norn Mother saw the Whirlwind Hour 



▼ » Greatening and darkening as it hurried on, 
She left the Heaven of Heroes and came down 
To make a man to meet the mortal need. 

She took the tried clay of the common road— 

Clay warm yet with the genial heat of Earth, 
Dashed through it all a strain of prophecy; 
Tempered the heap with thrill of human tears; 

Then mixed a laughter with the serious stuff. 

Into the shape she breathed a flame to light 
That tender, tragic, ever-changing face. 

Here was a man to hold against the world, 

A man to match the mountains and the sea. 


Edwin Markham,. 


Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865. 


50 


February J.3 

TIE who knows Love—becomes Love, and his eyes 
* Behold Love in the heart of everyone, 

Even the loveless. 

Elsa Barker. 


51 


February 14 

TO TjHE WOMEN OF AMEEICA 


W OMEN of all creeds and nationalities who call Amer¬ 
ica their country must stand together, forgetting all 
differences in one great likeness—their desire to be of ser¬ 
vice. 

Anna Howard Shaw. 


Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, 1847-1919. 
Feast of St. Valentine. 


52 


February 15 
TRUE LOVE 


M Y true-love hath my heart, and I have his, 

By just exchange one for the other given: 

I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss, 

There never was a better bargain driven: 

His heart in me keeps him and me in one. 

My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides: 

He loves my heart for once it was his own, 

I cherish his because in me it bides. 

Sir Philip Sidney. 




53 


February 16 

H ER eyes the glow-worm lend thee, 

The shooting stars attend thee: 

And the elves also. 

Whose little eyes glow 
Like the sparks of fire, befriend thee.. 

Robert Herrick, 1591-1674. 


54 


February 17 

THE HEART’S FRIEND 

F AIR is the white star of twilight, 
And the sky clearer 
At the day’s end; 

But she is fairer, and she is dearer 
She, my heart’s friend! 

Fair is the white star of twilight, 

And the moon roving 
To the sky’s end; 

But she is fairer, better worth loving. 
She, my heart’s friend. 

(Shoshone Love Song). 


Mary Austin. 


55 


February 18 


I REMEMBER the black wharves and the slips, 

And the sea-tides tossing free; 

And the Spanish sailors with bearded lips. 

And the beauty and mystery of the ships, 

And the magic of the sea. 

And the voice of that wayward song 
Is singing and saying still; 

“A boy’s will is the wind’s will. 

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.” 

Henry W. Longfellow. 


56 


February 19 


^^DVENTURE is not the food of life but the spice. 

David Grayson. 


57 


February 20 
FAME 


F AME is an honest thing, 

It is deceived not; 

It passes by the palace gates 
Where the crowned usurper waits 
Enters'the peasant-poet’s cot 
And cries — 11 Thou art the king! ’ ’ 

Richard Watson Gilder. 


58 


February 21 

^OW love, it cannot fail.” 


Alice Freeman Palmer, 1855-1902. 


59 


February 22 


H AIL, men of the future! 

The world’s real patriots ye! 

Above the dead 
I hear your tread 
That sets the people free! 

And I hear the fife, and I hear the drum, 

I hear the shouting whenever you come, 

And I see the glory in your face 
Who march to save the race. 

Justice shall be your weapon, and Truth the bomb you 
hurl, 

Flag of united nations the banner you unfurl. 

Hail, men of the present—do I hear your answering cry? 

* 1 Here am I! Here am I! ’ ’ 

Angela Morgan. 


George Washington, 1732-1799. 


60 


February 23 

Ti/f ADE of unpurchasable stuff, 

They went their way when ways were rough; 

They, when the traitors had deceived, 

Held the long purpose, and believed; 

They, when the face of God grew dim, 

Held through the dark and trusted Him— 

Brave souls that took the perilous trail 
And felt the vision could not fail. 

Edwin Markham. 




61 


February 24 

H E prayed; 

Not that the pain would cease, 

Nor yet for water in the parching heat, 

Nor for death’s quick release, 

Nor even for the tardy feet 
Of stretcher-bearers bringing aid. 

He prayed; 

Cast helpless on the bloody sod: 

“Don’t trouble now, O God, for me. 

But keep the boys. Go forward with them, God! 

O speed the Camerons to victory.” 

The kilts flashed on: “Well played,” he sighed, “well 
played. ’ 9 

Just so he prayed. 

Winnifred M. Letts. 

Taken by permission from ‘ ‘ The Spires of Oxford and Other 
Poems,” by Winnifred M. Letts, copyright, by E. P. 
Dutton and Company, New York. 


62 


February 25 


W HILE Kings of eternal evil 
Yet darken the hills about, 

Thy part is with broken sabre 
To rise on the last redoubt. 

To fear not sensible failure, 

Nor covet the game at all, 

But fighting, fighting, fighting, 

Die, driven against the wall! 

Louise Imogen Guiney. 


63 


f ebruary 26 

W HAT matters Death, if Freedom be not dead? 

No fags are fair, if Freedom’s flag be furled. 
Who fights for freedom, goes with joyful tread 
To meet the fires of Hell against him hurled, 

And has for Captain Him whose thorn-wreathed head 
Smiles from the Cross upon a conquered world. 

Joyce Kilmer : his last poem from France. 


64 


February 27 

THE GOLDEN WINDOWS 


T sunset there came an hour that was all his own, for 



-f*- his father had given it to him. Then the boy would go 
up to the top of a hill and look across at another hill that 
rose some miles away. On this far hill stood a house with 
windows of clear gold and diamonds. They shone and 
blazed so that it made the boy wink to look at them. 

One day he was given a holiday; then he put a piece of 
bread in his pocket, and started off to find the house with 
the golden windows. 

After a long time he came to a high green hill; and when 
he had climbed the hill, there was the house on top. But 
when he came up to the house, he could have wept, for the 
windows were of clear glass like any others, and there was 
no gold anywhere about them. , 

A woman came to the door and asked him in a kindly 
way what he wanted. “I saw the golden windows from 
our hilltop , 1 ’ he said, ‘ 1 and I came to see them, but now they 
are only glass. ’ 1 

The woman nodded her head kindly and asked him to 
sit down to rest. “We are but poor farming people,’’ 
she said. 

And then, as he looked across the valley to another hill 
far away, there stood another house with windows of clear 
gold and diamond, just as he had seen them before. And 
when he looked again, the boy saw that it was his own 
home. Adapted from Laura E. Bichards. 

Reprinted with permission from “The Golden Windows,” 
by Laura E. Richards; copyright, by Little, Brown 
and Company. 


65 


February 28 

THE DREAMERS 


fpHE gypsies passed her little gate— 

* Shq, stopped her wheel to see,— 

A brown-faced pair who walked the road, 

Free as the wind is free; 

And suddenly her tidy room 
A prison seemed to be. 

Her shining plates against the walls, 

Her sunlit, sanded floor, 

The brass-bound wedding chest that held, 

Her linen’s sunny store, 

The very wheel whose humming died,— 

Seemed only chains she bore. 

She watched the foot-free gypsies pass; 

She never knew or guessed 

The wistful dream that drew them close— 

The longing in each breast 
Some day to know a home like hers, 

Wherein their hearts might rest. 

Theodosia Garrison . 


66 


February 29 

A PEEP AT A TAJAR 


NCE upon a time there was a Tajar. Do you know 



V-/ what a Tajar is? Well, he’s something like a tiger, 
and something like a jaguar, and something like a badger; 
and if you should see him once you would forget what he 
looked like, but if you should see him twice you would 
forget to forget what he looked like, and that would be 


fatal. 


The Tajar lived somewhere near a Camp—in a Camp and 
around a Camp and under a Camp and over a Camp and all 
the places where a Camp was he lived in, except when he 
stayed in his Hiding Place, which was somewhere between 
the bottom of a tree and the top of the sky. When the 
Campers were in Camp, the Tajar stayed in his Hiding 
Place, but when they went away and when he got bored 
with his Hiding Place, and was filled with folly, he used to 
dance in the moonlight. 


Jane Shaw Ward. 


And one night—but if you want to know all about the 
Range-Ranger who ranged the ranges in that region, you 
will have to get someone to tell you the story; also how 
Tajar taught the witch’s tea-cups to take death-defying- 
life-le’aps through the branches with their handles. 

And to know all about Tajar is in itself Magic! 


TAJAR’S BIRTHDAY (or, if not, when?). 


67 



















































MARCH 


O YE Sun and Moon, bless ye the Lord: 

praise him and magnify him forever. 

O ye Stars of heaven, bless ye the Lord: 
praise him and magnify him forever. 


s 


69 


MAECH’S MAGIC 


HE bluebird, stained with earth and sky. 


March 1 


■y^^INTER to-day, but lol to-morrow spring! 

Bichard Le Gallienne. 


71 


March 2 


THE STARS 

1~\ID you ever look at the stars?’’ he asked, pointing up- 
^ wards. 

“ Often and often,” answered Will. 

“And do you know what they are?” 

11 1 have f ancied many things. ’ ’ 

* 1 They are worlds like ours, ’' said the young man. 
“Some of them less; many of them a million times greater; 
and some of the least sparkles that you see are not only 
worlds, but whole clusters of worlds turning about each 
other in the midst of space. We do not know what there 
may be in any of them; perhaps the answer to all our 
difficulties or the cure of all our sufferings: and yet we _ 
can never reach them; not all the skill of the craftiest of 
men can fit out a ship for the nearest of these our neigh¬ 
bors, nor would the life of the most aged suffice for such a 
journey. When a great battle has been lost or a dear friend 
is dead, when we are hipped or in high spirits, there they are 
unweariedly shining overhead. We may stand down here, a 
whole army of us together, and shout until we break our 
hearts, and not a whisper reaches them. We may climb 
the highest mountain, and we are no nearer them. All we 
can do is to stand down here in the garden and take off 
our hats . 9 * 

Robert Louis Stevenson. 


72 


March 3 


T YLTYL: Where are we? 

Light: Near to the stars, and yet within yourself. 

Maurice Maeterlinck. 


73 


March 4 


T HE world is all our neighborhood: only the stars are 
foreign lands. 


N 


74 


March 5 


THE MAGIC 


T AKE the charmed seeds I lay 
In your open hand: 

Some would cast them all away, 

You will understand. 

Trust the hud to come to flower, 

Trust the flower for fruit. 

Listen in the winter-time 
For a cricket lute. 

Josephine Preston Peabody. 


75 


March 6 
TREES 

1 THINK that I shall never see 
A poem lovely as a tree. 

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest 
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast; 

A tree that looks at God all day. 

And lifts her leafy arms to pray; 

A tree that may in Summer wear 
A nest of robins in her hair; 

Upon whose bosom snow has lain; 

Who intimately lives with rain. 

Poems are made by fools like me. 

But only God can make a tree. 

Joyce Kilmer. 


76 


March 7 


IDEALISTS 

B rother Tree: 

Why do you reach and reach? 

Do you dream some day to touch the sky? 

Brother Stream: 

Why do you run and run? 

Do you dream some day to fill the sea? 

Brother Bird: 

Why do you sing and sing? 

Do you dream— 

Young Man: 

Why do you talk and talk and talk? 

Alfred Kreymborg. 


77 


March 8 


THE POPLAKS 

T HE slender poplars always grow 
In a long and solemn row, 

Marching gravely by the wall 
Like a leafy funeral. 

I guess you would never think 
That I’ve seen the poplars wink! 

Walter Prichard Eaton. 


78 


March 9 

THE FOREST SCHOOL 


rpHE little firs demurely stand 
A In studious rows, on either hand. 

On winter days about like these, 

All learning to be Christmas trees. 

Mary Carolyn Davies. 


79 


March 10 


G AY stars, little stars, you are little eyes, 

Eyes of baby angels playing in the skies. 

Now and then a winged child turns his merry face 
Down toward the spinning world—what a funny place. 

Joyce Kilmer. 


March 11 


A STAR-FANCY FOR A CHILD 

B UT when the nights begin to freeze, 

Eastwards behind the naked trees 
Orion lifts his head to spy 
Those stars that in the garden lie. 

Night after night you see him stride 
Across the South at Christmas tide: 

Though all the fields are white with snow, 

He watches for the stars to blow. 

But when 'tis near his time to rest, 

Leaning his head towards the West, 

When April nights are sharp and clear, 

He sees the garden-stars appear. 

For just before he sinks from sight 
He sees the border strewn with light. 

And looking back across the hills 
Beholds the shining daffodils. 

G. Forrester Scott. 


81 


March 12 

I T is by knowing human beings that we come to under¬ 
stand them, and by understanding them come to love 
them, and so it is with the green people. . . . When I go 
to the woods, it is like going among old and treasured 
friends, and with riper acquaintance the trees come to take 
on, curiously, a kind of personality, so that I am much 
fonder of some trees than of others, and instinctively seek 
out the companionship of certain trees in certain moods, as 
one will his friends. 

I love the unfolding beeches in spring, and the pines in 
winter; the elms I care for afar off, like great aloof men, 
whom I can admire; but for friendly confidences give me 
an apple-tree in an old green meadow. 

David Grayson. 


82 




March 13 

T HE world would yet be a place of peace if we were all 
peace-makers, and gentle service should we have of its 
creatures if we gave them gentle mastery. But so long as 
we choose to make sport of slaying bird and beast, so long 
as we choose to contend with our fellows more than with 
our faults, and make battle-field of our meadows instead of 
pasture,—so long, truly, the Flaming Sword will still turn 
every way and the gates of Eden remain barred close enough, 
till we have sheathed the sharper flame of our own pas¬ 
sions, and broken down the closer gates of our own hearts. 

John Buskin. 


83 


March 14 


rj^HANK God, they cannot cut down the clouds! 

Henry David Thoreau. 


84 


March 15 


THE CANTICLE OP THE SUN 


O M0ST High, Almighty, good Lord God, to thee belong 
praise, glory, honor, and all blessing. 

Praised be my Lord God, with all his creatures, and spe¬ 
cially our brother the sun, who brings us the day and 
who brings us the light; fair is he, and he shines with a 
very great splendor. O Lord, he signifies thee! 

Praised be my Lord for our sister the moon, and for the 
stars, the which he has set clear and lovely in heaven. 
Praised be my Lord for our brother the wind, and for air 
and clouds, calm and all weather, by which thou up- 
holdest life in all creatures. 

Praised be my Lord for our sister water, who is very ser¬ 
viceable to us, and humble and precious and clean. 
Praised be my Lord for our brother fire, through whom 
thou givest us light in the darkness, and he is bright 
and pleasant, and very mighty and strong. 

Praised be my Lord for our mother the earth, the which 
doth sustain us and keep us, and bringest forth divers 
fruits, and flowers of many colors, and grass. . . . 
Praise ye and bless ye the Lord; and give thanks to him 
and serve him with great humility. 

St. Francis of Assisi. 


85 


March 16 

H E knows the gospel of the trees, 

The whispered message of the seas; 

Finds in some beetle on the road 
A power to lift the human load; 

Sees, in some dead leaf dried and curled, 

The deeper meaning of the world; 

Hears through the roar of mortal things 
The God’s immortal whisperings; 

Sees the world-wonder rise and fall, 

And knows that Beauty made it all. 

Edwin MarTcham. 


86 


March 17 


THE BREASTPLATE OF ST. PATRICK 

I ARISE to-day in the strength of the heaven, 

The glory of the sun, 

The radiance of the moon, 

The splendour of fire, and the swiftness of the levin, 
The wind's flying force, 

The depth of the sea, 

The earth's steadfast course, 

The rock's austerity. 


Christ behind and before me, 

Christ beneath me and o'er me, 

Christ within and without me, 

Christ with and about me, 

Christ on my left and Christ on my right, 

Christ with me at morn and Christ with me at night; 

Christ in each heart that shall take thought of me; 

Christ in each mouth that shall speak aught of me; 

Christ in each eye that shall ever on me fasten; 

Christ in each ear that shall ever to me listen. 

St. Patrick. 

Reprinted with permission from “The Irish Book of 
Poetry," by Alfred Percivale Graves; published by 
Frederick A. Stokes Company. 


St. Patrick, 389(?)-461. 


87 


\ 


March 18 


I N the sunshiny days of Springtime I can be sixteen and 
when Autumn has made the days grey I can be sixty. 
When you forget the exact date of your birth, it is as de¬ 
lightful to be sixty as sixteen. 

Dug aid Stewart Walker. 


88 


/ 


March 19 


LIVINGSTONE 

T O lift the sombre fringes of the night, 

To open lands long darkened to the Light, 

To heal grim wounds, to give the blind new sight, 

Right mightily wrought he. 

Forth to the fight he fared, 

High things and great he dared, 

He thought of all men but himself, 

Himself he never spared. 

He greatly loved— 

He greatly lived— 

And died right mightily. 

John Oxeriham. 


David Livingstone, 1813-1873. 


March 20 


THE GARDENS OF THE SKY 

T O every season its flowers—and to every season its 
stars. , 9 

Have you ever seen Spring come among the stars? 

Do you know the stars that guarded on the night when you 
were born? 

To-night is the Vernal Equinox, the 20th of March. 

Orion, the Great Hunter, is setting in the west, with many 
stars of the first magnitude near him: Sirius, Rigel, 
Aldebaran, Capella and Castor and Pollux. 

Virgo, with her diamond Spica, is far in the east. To 
your left as you face her, glows the great star Arcturus; 
farther still to the left lies the great square of Her¬ 
cules. 

The Great Dipper with brim downwards is almost over 
your head as you face toward north. 

At the end of a line with the stars that mark the drinking- 
side of the Dipper opposite to the handle, you may 
easily find the North Star and discover thus a way of 
always gauging the direction north. This star is so in¬ 
conceivably far that it appears practically stationary 
and its absence if it were blotted out would not be 
marked by us for thousands of years. 

The ‘ ‘ handle 1 ’ of the Dipper is the tail of the Great Bear 
called Ursa Major—who walks around the Pole with 
his back downwards, his head thrust out and his feet 
marked by three pairs of stars in the middle of the sky. 
Adapted, by permission of the publishers from “A Year 
with the Stars,” by Garrett Serviss. Copyright, 1910, 
by Harper and Brothers. 

90 


March 21 

G OOD humor and good nature, friends at home that love 
you, and friends abroad that miss you—you possess all 
these things, and more innumerable, and these are all sweet 
things. You may extract honey from everything. 

Charles Lamb. 


91 


March 22 


THE WIND (An Indian Song) 


T HE wind is carrying me round the sky; 

The wind is carrying me round the sky. 

My body is here in the valley— 

The wind is carrying me round the sky. 

Alice Corbin. 


92 


March 23 

SPRING TO THE WORLD 

T HERE ’S listening in the brook’s low purr, 

There’s yearning in the blue; 

I hear a dead leaf softly stir 
To let a brave arbutus through. 

Standing alone and very still, 

My tardy heart can hear 
The sunshine purging every rill 
To make its golden topaz clear. 

One yellow iris, tall and choice, 

Declares her flag unfurled— 

Speaking as with a bugle’s voice 
Unto a dull and stricken world. 

O God, I do attest the call 
Thou criest unto men: 

“O World, my World, be beautiful— 

Be beautiful again! ’ ’ 

Martha Foote Crow. 


93 


March 24 


B ehold how much 

Within my hand I hold! 

A bulb, brown and tight, 

Leaf lapped, fold on fold, 

As if from prying sight 
And winter’s cold 

To keep the spark of the Eternal Light. 

Evelyn Underhill. 

Taken by permission from “Immanence,” by Evelyn Under¬ 
hill; copyrighted by E. P. Dutton and Company, New 
York. 


94 


March 25 

W HAT hast thou learnt to-day? 

Hast thou sounded awful mysteries, 

Hast pierced the veiled skies, 

Climbed to the feet of God, 

Trodden where saints have trod, 

Fathomed the heights above? 

Nay! 

This only have I learnt, that God is love. 

Robert Hugh Benson . 


95 


March 26 




EASTEB 


T HE air is like a butterfly 
With frail blue wings. 

The happy earth looks at the sky 
And sings. 


Joyce Kilmer. 


96 



March 27 

AN EASTER CANTICLE 

T N every trembling bud and bloom 

*■ That cleaves the earth, a flowery sword, 

I see Thee come from out the tomb, 

Thou risen Lord. 

In every April wind that sings 
Down lanes that make the heart rejoice, 

Yea, in the word the wood-thrush brings, 

I hear Thy voice. 

Lo! every tulip is a cup 

To hold Thy morning’s brimming wine; 

Drink, O my soul, the wonder up— 

Is it not Thine? 

The great Lord God, invisible. 

Hath roused to rapture the green grass; 

Through sunlit mead and dew-drenched dell, 

I see him pass. 

His old immortal glory wakes 

The rushing streams and emerald hills; 

His ancient trumpet softly shakes 
The daffodils. 

Thou art not dead! Thou art the whole 
Of life that quickens in the sod; 

Green April is Thy very soul, 

Thou great Lord God! 

Charles Hanson Towne. 


97 


March 28 


T O be truly happy is a question of how we begin and not 
of how we end, and what we want and not of what we 
have. 


Robert Louis Stevenson. 


98 


March 29 

ON BEING LONELY 

I AM no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion 
in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horsefly, 
or a bumble-bee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, 
or a weathercock, or the North Star, or the south wind, 
or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider 
in a new house. 


I have a great deal of company in my house; especially 
in the morning, when nobody calls. 


Why should I feel lonely? Is not our planet in the 
Milky Way? 


Henry David Thoreau. 




March 30 


GOOD COMPANY 

T O-DAY I have grown taller from walking with the trees, 
The seven sister-poplars who go softly in a line; 

And I think my heart is whiter for its parley with a star 
That trembled out at nightfall and hung above the pine. 

The call-note of a redbird from the cedars in the dusk 
Woke his happy mate within me to an answer free and 
fine; 

And a sudden angel beckoned from a column of blue 
smoke— 

Lord, who am I that they should stoop—these holy folk of 
thine? 

Karle Wilson Baker. 



100 


I 



March 31 


HE best partners of solitude are books. I like to take a 



A book with me in my pocket, although I find the world so 
full of interesting things,—sights, sounds, odours,—that of¬ 
ten I never read a word in it. It is like having a valued 
friend with you, though you walk for miles without saying 
a word to him or he to you. 


David Grayson. 


101 






APRIL 


O YE Showers and Dew, bless ye the Lord 
praise him and magnify him forever. 

O ye Winds of God, bless ye the Lord: 
praise him and magnify him forever. 


103 


APKIL’S MAGIO 


bracken-tips tight curled. f> 


104 


April 1 

SPRING 'S SARABAND 


O YER the hills of April 

With soft winds hand in hand, 

Impassionate and dreamy-eyed, 

Spring leads her saraband. 

Her garments float and gather 
And swirl along the plain, 

Her headgear is the golden sun, 

Her cloak the silver rain. 

Bliss Carman. 



! 


105 


April 2 

A LAUD TO THE TREES (After St. Francis) 


B LESSED be our Lord God for our brothers and sisters 
the trees, their leaves and their roots and their benevo¬ 
lent shadows; for the trees that dance and the trees that 
sing, and especially the beeches of La Verna, because they 
sing ‘ ‘ Alleluia. * ’ 

Florence Converse. 


106 


April 3 

IN APRIL 


T HE wind tangles and knots the willow’s skein. 

The small peach bears a load all blossomy; 

But presently she lets it fall again, 

Petal by petal, from her listless hand. 

I sit and listen to the beating wings 
Of swift spring days flying from southern lands. 

Beneath the crested eaves the wind-bells praise 
Hawk days, dove days, and darting swallow days. 

Elizabeth Jane Coatsworth. 


* 1 Six Po^ms from a Chinese Court. ’ 9 The Century Magazine. 


t 


107 


April 4 


HE duty to serve the divine cause of humanity in its 



1 entirety, that of my people in particular, has been the 
law of my life—the supreme law, whose voice quelled my 
passions, my desires, my weaknesses. 

“The little Grandmother of the Russian revolution,’ , Cath¬ 
erine Breshkovsky. 


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108 


April 5 

HERE'S APRIL 


W EARIED one. 

Rest a little in the sun. 

Here is April come behind you 
With a blessing on your head: 

Rains unshed, 

And her loving hands that blind you 
While she queries, “Who am IV’ 

Of the darkened eye. 

O, I heard the winter pass! 

Came a sigh from waking grass 
That should wake a daffodilly. 

April, and up-rising now,—and every kind of lily. 

Josephine Preston Peabody. 


109 


April 6 
YOUTH 


N OT for itself is beauty, but for us 

Who gaze upon it with all reverent eyes. 

Theodosia Garrison. 




110 


April 7 

AN APRIL PRAYER 


L ORD, to thy signal-light the trees 
In leaf and flower, reply; 

Let not my heart, more dull than these, 

Alone unawakened lie. 

John Bannister Tabb. 


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111 


April 8 

APRIL'S BIRTHDAYS 


W ERE you an April baby? There are a great many 
others! 

Meadow-mice are naming the young ones of the first 
brood in nests on the ground. 

Squirrels begin to make up their families in high nests in 
the hollows of trees. 

Lynx, gray-fox and weasels, as well as the little skunks, 
have birthdays. 

Fur-bearing animals pack away their winter furs. 

Ducks of all sorts pass north. 

Eagles nest in precarious places on cliffs and in trees. 
Whip-poor-wills arrive from the South. 

Chimney-swifts, humming-birds, kingbirds, vesper spar¬ 
rows arrive. 

All the swallow family, the vireos and some of the warblers 
arrive. 

About the third week we hear the “teacher” call of the 
oven-bird. 

Robins and blue-birds are nesting. 

Minnows begin to spawn in the brooks. 

The trout and salmon go up-stream to spawn. 

The spotted salamander lays eggs in still waters. 

Frogs are noisy, for the tadpoles are hatching; “peepers” 
too are laying eggs. 

Turtles hunt their mates; queen-hornets start new nests in 
trees or rafters; ants, too, repair to spring house¬ 
cleaning. 

This is a month of startling changes from the beginning 
when the first flowers are pushing slowly through the 
112 


soil;—the red of the skunk-cabbage, Dutchman’s 
breeches, bloodroot, delicate hepaticas, anemone and 
shadbush and the trailing arbutus, that spirit of the 
spring in the heart of winter! 

How busy was all the rest of the world when I was being 
born! 

Adapted, by permission of the publishers, from Nature’s 
Calendar, by Ernest Ingersoll. Copyright, 1910, by 
Harper and Brothers. 


313 


April 9 


F OR what is it to be a poet? It is to see at a glance the 
glory of the world, to see beauty in all its forms and 
manifestations, to feel ugliness like a pain, to resist the 
wrongs of others as bitterly as one’s own, to know mankind 
as others know single men, to know Nature as botanists a 
flower, to be thought a fool, to hear at moments the clear 
voice of God. 

Lord Dunsany. 


114 




April 10 


T/'NOW you what it is to be a child? It is to have a 
* spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is 
to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; 
it is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in 
your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into 
horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, 
for each child has its fairy godmother in its own soul; it 
is to live in a nut-shell and to count yourself the king of 
infinite space. 

Francis Thompson. 


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115 


April 11 

WHENEVER A LITTLE CHILD IS BORN 


W HENEVER a little child is born, 

All night a soft wind rocks the corn; 

One more buttercup wakes to the morn, 

Somewhere, somewhere. 

One more rosebud shy will unfold, 

One more grass-blade push through the mold, 

One more bird-song the air will hold, 

Somewhere, somewhere. 

Agnes L. Carter. 


116 




April 12 

A BABY 


F RAGOLETTA is so small. 

We wonder that she lives at all— 

Tiny alabaster girl, 

Hardly bigger than a pearl; 

That is why we take such care, 

Lest someone runs away with her. 

Richard Le Gallienne. 


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117 


April 13 

THREE WISHES 

I AM your Godmother, ’ ’ she said, scarcely above a whis¬ 
per. 

“I came uninvited to your christening. My sisters, the 
fairies, sent me here, to present to you three gifts. 

‘ 1 Their first gift to you is a name. By the fairies you will 
be called Cynthia, because you shall be as beautiful as the 
crescent moon setting in a twilight of April. 

“And the fairies give you a star, all for your own. The 
North Star is yours. You must watch for this star every 
cloudless night. If you never fail to bear loving-kindness 
in your heart for my kinsfolk while you look at your star, 
when, some day, love comes into your life it will never, never 
leave you. 

“Listen well, Godchild, as I give you the third gift. 
You are granted the privilege of making one wish,—only a 
single wish that will surely come true. Cherish the last 
gift. Save it until you are in need of fairy consolation . 1 f 

Dugald Stewart Walker. 


April 14 


S OME people think that there are no fairies. But it is a 
wide world, and plenty of room in it for fairies without 
people seeing them; unless, of course, they look in the right 
place. The most wonderful and the strongest things in the 
world you know, are just the things which no one can see. 
There is life in you; and it is the life in you which makes 
you grow, and move, and think: yet you cannot see it. And 
there is steam in a steam-engine; and that is what makes 
it move: and yet you can’t see it; and so there may be 
fairies in the world, and they may be just what makes 
the world go round to the old tune of 

‘ ‘ C ’est 1 ’amour, 1 ’amour, 1 ’amour 
Qui fait la monde a la ronde.” 

Charles Kingsley. 


119 


April 15 

DID YOU EVER 




D ID you ever see a fairy in a rose-leaf coat and cap 

Swinging in a cobweb hammock as he napped his noon¬ 
day nap? 

Did you ever see one waken very thirsty and drink up 
All the honey-dew that glimmered in a golden buttercup? 

Did you ever see one fly away on rainbow-twinkling wings? 
If you did not, why, how comes it that you never see such 
things? 

Evaleen Stein. 


120 


April 16 


T ’D like to tame a fairy, 

* To keep it on a shelf. 

To see it wash its little face, 

And dress its little self. 

IM teach it pretty manners, 

It always should say, “ Please”; 

And then, you know, IM make it sew, 

And curtsey with its knees. 

Unknown. 


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121 


April 17 


HE fairies possess a sense of play that human beings 



A have when they are born into this world, but nearly 
always they lose it. If a fairy feels his play getting lost, he 
must lie on his back and each member of the tribe to which 
he belongs has one tickle at him, which is the very best 
medicine for this malady. 

If it cannot be tickled back into the place it belongs, the 
Apothecary, with his quill made of a feather from a star¬ 
ling's tail, and with the crimson juice of the pokeberry weed, 
writes a sign which is posted on the patient's chest. 

It reads, ‘ ‘ GROWING UP! " 

When the dreaded words appear, it is a sign that he is to 
be exiled from his tribe. Silently a solemn ceremony is per¬ 
formed. 


Dug aid Stewart Walker. 


122 


April 18 

APROPOS OF 


rj^HE dear old days when I could fly . 11 

‘‘Peter,” she said, “are you expecting me to fly away 
with you?” 

‘ ‘ Of course; that is why I have come. ’ ’ He added a little 
sternly, ‘ ‘ Have you forgotten that this is spring house-clean¬ 
ing .time?” 

James M. Barrie. 


123 


W HY can’t you fly now, mother ? ’ ’ 

“Because I am grown up, dearest 
grow up they forget the way. 


When people 


James M. Barrie. 


April 20 


O NE way to Fairyland is through the dawn, 

Over the misty summit of the hill, 

Through the dew-drenehed, bird-haunted wood, until 
The path leads straight into the glowing eastern light. 


One way to Fairyland is midnight’s hour 
In some old wood. The moonlight fitfully 
Drifts through the boughs overhead, fantastically, 
Splashing the black with silver in a world entranced and 
dumb. 

One way to Fairyland is through the heart, 

The heart where shy love-spirits have their birth, 

Fairies that make a Paradise of earth. 

One way to Fairyland is through the heart. 

Mary Elizabeth Rodhouse. 


125 


April 21 

OUT OP THE MORNING 


W ILL there really be a morning? 

Is there such a thing as day? 

Could I see it from the mountains 
If I were as tall as they? 

Has it feet like water-lilies? 

Has it feathers like a bird? 

Is it brought from famous countries 
Of which I have never heard? 

Oh, some scholar! Oh, some sailor! 

Oh, some wise man from the skies! 

Please to tell a little pilgrim 
Where the place called morning lies. 

Emily Dickinson. 

Reprinted by permission of the publishers from Poems , by 
Emily Dickinson; copyright by Little, Brown and Com¬ 
pany. 


126 



April 22 


W HAT foot would fail to meet her, 
And who would stay indoor. 
When April in her glory 
Comes triumphing once more— 

When adder-tongue and tulip 
Put on their coats of gold, 

And all the world goes love-mad 
For beauty as of old? 


Bliss Carman. 


April 23 


C OMMEMORATE his birth 
Who loved the kindly earth, 

Was gentle, strong, compassionate, humane, 
And tolerant and wise 
And glad. 


Bliss Carman. 


William Shakespeare, 1564-1616. 


1‘28 


April 24 


W HAN that Aprille with his shoures sote 

The droughte of Marche hath perced to the rote, 
And bathed every veyne in swich licour, 

Of which vertu engendred is the flour; 

Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth 
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth 
The tendre croppes; and the yonge sonne 
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne, 

And smale fowles maken melodye, 

That slepen al the night with open ye, 

(So priketh hem nature in hir corages): 

Then longen folk to goon on pilgrimages. 

Geoffrey Chaucer, 1340-1400. 


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129 


April 25 

HIS PILGRIMAGE 

G IVE me my scallop-shell of quiet, 

My staff of faith to walk upon, 

My scrip of joy, immortal diet. 

My bottle of salvation, 

My gown of glory, hope’s true gage; 

And thus I ’ll take my pilgrimage. 

Sir Walter Raleigh, 1552-1618. 


130 


April 26 

A BLESSING FOB A PILGRIMAGE 


W E humbly beseech Thee that Thou would 'st be pleased 
to bless this scrip and staff, that whosoever for love 
of Thy Name, shall seek to bear the same by his side, to 
hang it at his neck, or to carry it in his hands, and so on his 
pilgrimage to seek the aid of the saints with the accom¬ 
paniment of humble prayer, being protected by the guard¬ 
ianship of Thy right hand, may be found mostly to attain 
unto the joy of the everlasting vision, through Thee, O 
Saviour of the World, who with the Father and the Holy 
Spirit liveth and reigneth, ever one God, world without end. 
Amen. 

From the Sarum Missal. 


131 


April 27 


jyjY books are friends that never fail me. 

Thomas Carlyle. 


There is no frigate like a book 
To take us lands away. 

Emily Dickinson. 


Hans Christian Andersen, 1805-1875. 


April 28 

BATTY AND MOLE AND TOAD HAVE AN ATTACK 
OF SPRING FEVER 

I ’VE discovered the real thing, the only genuine occupa¬ 
tion for a lifetime. I propose to devote the remainder 
of mine to it, and can only regret the wasted years that lie 
behind me, squandered in trivialities. Come with me, dear 
Ratty . . . and you shall see what you shall see.” 

Toad led the way to the stable-yard accordingly, the Rat 
following with a most mistrustful expression; and there, 
drawn out of the coach-house into the open, they saw a 
gipsy caravan, shining with newness, painted a canary-yellow 
picked out with green and yellow wheels. 

1 ‘ There you are! ’ ’ cried the Toad, straddling and ex¬ 
panding himself. ‘‘ There’s real life for you, embodied in 
that little cart. The open road, the dusty highway, the 
heath, the common, the hedgerows, the rolling downs! 
Camps, villages, towns, cities! Here to-day, up and off to 
somewhere else to-morrow! Travel, change, interest, excite¬ 
ment! The whole world before you, and a horizon that’s 
always changing! . . . ” 

“I beg your pardon,” said the Rat slowly, as he chewed 
a straw, “but did I overhear you say something about ‘we,’ 
and ‘start,’ and ‘this afternoon’?” 

Kenneth Grahame. 


133 


April 29 

MR. DOOLEY ON ADVENTURE 

N’ where have all these advintures occurred, d’ye say? 



Well, some iv th’ most feerocyous iv thim happened in 
me bedroom, an’ some on th’ front stoop iv th’ house on 
warm moonlight nights, but most iv thim here in this room in 
front iv th’ fire. Be rights th’ walls ought to be die’rated 
with moose antlers, tigers’ heads, diplomas, soords, votes iv 
Congress, medals an’ autygrafted pitchers iv th’ crowned 
heads iv Europe. Th’ best advintures anny iv us has is at 
home in a comf’rtable room—th’ mos’ excitin’ an’ th’ 
asiest. Ye can make ye’ersilf as brave as ye want an’ 
as cool, ye avide mussin ’ ye ’er clothes, ye flavor with danger 
to th ’ taste, an ’ ye get a good dale more applause an ’ get it 
quicker thin th’ other kind iv hayro. F’r manny years I’ve 
shot all me tigers fr’m this rockin' chair. 


Finley Peter Dunne. 


134 


April 30 


QNTE loving spirit sets another on fire. 

St. Augustine. 


St. Catherine of Siena, 1347-1380. 


135 


4 


MAY 


O YE Winter and Summer, bless ye the Lord: 
praise him and magnify him forever. 

O ye Nights and Days, bless ye the Lord: 
praise him and magnify him forever. 


137 


L 

MAY’S MAGIC 


S UMMER-snow of apple-blossom, running up from glade 
to glade .’’ 


138 


May 1 


■pvEAR, it is the first of May, 

^ Come with me, and let’s away 
Far from town and every day. 

How the sun makes all things new! 

Bricks are gold and slates are blue. 

Were the station but more airy 
’Twere a cage for a canary, 

And the bridge and houses hideous 
Almost please a taste fastidious. 

Cosmo MonTchouse. 


139 


May 2 

WITCHCRAFT 

T HERE’S a witchcraft in the May, 

Bluebirds say, 

For ’tis then the pansies wise 
Give the garden a surprise 
By changing into rangingbutterflies. 

Who has seen them, wing on wing. 

Fluttering, 

Purple, orange, lilac, brown. 

On the road to Rainbow Town, 

Where the petal people love to settle down? 

Should you meet them, do not snap 

Off your cap 

With a prisoner in view; 

Leave them to the air and dew, 

Or the garden will not lightly pardon you. 

Katharine Lee Bates. 

Taken by permission from 11 Fairy Gold,' ’ by Katharine Lee 
Bates; copyrighted by E. P. Dutton and Company, New 
York. 


140 


May 3 


M AY is building her home. From the dust of things 
She is making the songs and the flowers and the 
wings; 

From October’s tossed and trodden gold 
She is making the young year out of the old; 

Yea! out of winter’s flying sleet 
She is making the summer sweet, 

And the brown leaves spurned of November’s feet 
I She is changing back again to spring’s. 

Bichard Le Gallienne. 


141 


May 4 

THE GREEN KOBE 


T HIS is what I remember to have seen. 

I stood on the border of a vast robe; its material 
was green. A great fold of it lay full in view, but I 
was conscious that it stretched for almost unlimited miles. 
This great green robe blazed with embroidery. There 
were straight lines of tawny work on either side which 
melted again into a darker green in high relief. Eight in 
the centre lay a pale agate stitched into the robe with 6 
fine, dark stitches; overhead the blue lining of this silken 
robe reached out. I was conscious that this robe was vast 
beyond conception, and that I stood as it were in a fold 
of it, as it lay stretched out on some unseen floor. But, 
clearer than any other thought, stood out in my mind the 
certainty that this robe had not been flung down and left, 
but that it clothed a Person. And even as this thought 
showed itself a ripple ran along the high relief in dark 
green, as if the wearer of the robe had just stirred. And 
I felt on my face the breeze of His motion. And it was 
this I suppose that brought me to myself. 

Robert Hugh Benson. 


142 


May 5 

PHILOSOPHER’S GARDEN 
EE this my garden, 



^ Large and fair!” 
Thus, to his friend, 

The Philosopher. 

“ ’Tis not too long,” 
His friend replied, 

With truth exact,— 

“Nor yet too wide, 

But well compact, 

If somewhat cramped 
On every side.” 

Quick the reply— 

“But see how high !— 
It reaches up 
To God’s blue shy!” 


John Oxenham, 


143 


May 6 


O PEN the windows of your wondering heart 
To God’s supreme Creation; make it yours, 

And give to other hearts your ample store; 

For when the whole of you is but a part 
Of joyous beauty such as e’er endures, 

Only by giving can you gain the more! 

Corinne Roosevelt Robinson. 


144 


May 7 

HOSPITALITY 

W HETHER my house is dark or bright, 

I close it not on any wight, 

Lest Thou, hereafter, King of Stars, 

Against me close thy Heavenly bars. 

If from a guest who shares thy board, 

Thy dearest dainty thou shalt hoard, 

’Tis not the guest, O do not doubt it, 

But Mary’s Son shall do without it. 

From the Ancient Irish. 

Reprinted with permission from “The Irish Book of 
Poetry,” by Alfred Percival Graves, published by 
Frederick A. Stokes Company. 


145 


May 8 


T HE grass is full of murmurs; 

The sky is full of wings; 

The earth is full of breath. 

With voices, choir on choir 
With tongues of fire, 

They sing how Life out-sings— 

Out-numbers Death. 

Josephine Preston Peabody. 


146 


May 9 


^JO on, go on! I can hear the bluebird just the same! 

Henry David Thoreau. 



147 


May 10 


N O mortal is alert enough to be awake at the first dawn 
of spring. 

In a pleasant spring morning, all men’s sins are for¬ 
given. 


Henry David Thoreau. 


.148 


May 11 


/^HILD of the country! free as air 
Art thou, and as the sunshine fair. 

Allan Cunningham. 



149 


May 12 

PLAYING HOUSE WITH PETER PAN 


T HEN tliey all went on their knees, and holding out their 
arms cried, “O Wendy, lady, be our mother.” 
“Ought I?” Wendy said all shining. “Of course it’s 
frightfully fascinating, but you see I am only a little 
girl. I have no real experience.” 

“That doesn’t matter,” said Peter, as if he were the 
only person who knew all about it, though he was really 
the one who knew least. “What we need is just a nice 
motherly person. ’’ 

“Oh! dear!” Wendy said. “You see I feel that is 
exactly what I am.” 

“It is, it is,” they all cried, “we saw it at once.” 
“Very well,” she said, “I will do my best. Come 
inside at once, you naughty children; I am sure your 
feet are damp. And before I put you to bed I have 
just time to finish the story of Cinderella.” 

James M. Barrie. 


Mother’s Day. 

Florence Nightingale, 1820-1910. 


150 


May 13 

MORE FROM LEWIS CARROLL’S LETTERS 


T HAVE been awfully busy, and I’ve had to write heaps 
* of letters,—wheel-barrows full—almost. And it tires 
me so that generally I go to bed again the next minute 
after I get up; and sometimes I go to bed again a minute 
before I get up! Did you ever hear of anyone being so 
tired as that? 

How often you must find yourself in want of a pin! 
(This letter was sent to a little girl with the gift of a 
pin-cushion.) For instance, you go into a shop and you 
say to the man, “I want the largest penny bun you can 
let me have for a half-penny.” And perhaps the man 
looks stupid and doesn’t quite understand what you mean. 
Then how convenient it is to have a pin ready to stick 
into the back of his hand, while you say, “Now then! 
Look sharp, stupid! ’ * . . . 

You might as well tell me at the same time whether 
you are still living at Rotherwick and whether you are 
at home, and whether you’re still a child or a grown-up 
person—and whether you ’re going to the seaside next 
summer—and anything else (except the alphabet and the 
multiplication-table) that you happen to know. I send you 
20,000,000 kisses. 

Lewis Carroll. 


151 


May 14 

TOY is such stuff as the hinges of Heaven’s doors are 


made of. 


Robert Haven Schauffler. 


152 


May 15 


J OY of life seems to me to arise from a sense of being 
where one belongs; of being foursquare with the life 
we have chosen. 

David Grayson. 


153 


May 16 

T HE fields grow green 

With the mighty mystery of springing grain. 

Hamlin Garland. 


154 


May 17 

THE WHIP-POOR-WILL’S HOUR 

T HE cool sweet air, 

The dark fern-scented woods, 

The breath of oak and pine, 

The fire-flies in the grass, 

The chirp of sleepy crickets, 

The song of the thrush. 

The lullaby of streams, 

The unutterable coolness and sweetness— 

The odor of apple blooms and grass— 

Then from the fragrant dusk of pines 
The whip-poor-will puts forth his slender cry. 

Hamlin Garland. 


355 


May 18 


rpHE year’s at the spring 
^ And day’s at the morn; 

Morning’s at seven; 

The hillside’s dew-pearled; 

The lark’s on the wing; 

The snail’s on the thorn: 

God’s in his heaven— 

All’s right with the world! 

Robert Browning. 


156 


May 19 
ORCHARDS 


O RCHARDS in the Spring-time! Oh, I think and think 
of them,— 

Filmy mists of pink and white above the fresh young 
green, 

Lifting and drifting,—how my eyes could dream of them, 
I’m staring at a dirty wall beyond a big machine. 

Orchards in the Spring-time! Deep in soft, cool shadows,— 
Moving all together when the west wind blows 
Fragments upon fragments over road and meadows— 

I’m smelling heat and oil and sweat, and thick, black 
clothes. 

Orchards in the Spring-time! The clean white and pink 
of them 

Lifting and drifting with all the winds that blow. 
Orchards in the Spring-time! Thank God, I still can 
think of them! 

You’re not docked for thinking,—if the foreman doesn’t 
know. 

Theodosia Garrison. 


157 


May 20 

MY GARDEN 


I CAN shut my eyes and see 
Just the garden it would be. 

Wallflowers blooming in the spring, 

Brown and gold aglow; 

Later London pride would come 
Neatly in a row. 

Brilliant larkspur flashing blue. 

White and coral phlox, 

Soon to be outgrown and hid 
By giant hollyhocks. 

These and many more I’d have. 

But. if not God’s will— 

I still have geraniums 
Growing on my sill. 

I can shut my eyes and see 
Just the garden it would be. 

Grace Lowrey Daly. 


158 


May 21 

OF MISS DODGE 


QHE was certain to understand. In the spacious roomi- 
^ ness of her mind there was shelter for the opinions 
of all. Her hospitable spirit qntertained them. And this 
was not that she was all things to all men in any easy¬ 
going desire to please and agree. It was rather that she 
had a mind and a heart so large, that with the eyes of her 
mind she saw ahead and around the views that many of us 
took, and her heart had room for everything but prejudice. 

The first impression I received of Miss Dodge was of 
wonder at the way in which she was willing to take a person 
on faith; and the wonder abides still. Nor was this 
belief in people simply for the time or for the occasion. 
Her trust lasted. 

An organization was never an organization to Miss Dodge. 
To her it was a company of friends. 

Mabel Cratty. 


Grace Hoadley Dodge, 1857-1914. 
Elizabeth Fry, 1780-1845. 


159 


May 22 


T HE struggle of to-day is not altogether for to-day. 
It is for a vast future also. 

Abraham Lincoln. 

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ICO 


May 23 

SUPPLICATION 


/^1IVE me the heart-touch with all that live, 

And strength to speak my word; 

But if that is denied me, give 
The strength to live unheard. 

Edwin Marlcham. 


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161 


May 24 

H E that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over 
which he himself must pass; for we all have need to 
be forgiven. 

George Herbert. 



162 


May 25 

THE MINISTRY OP THE CLOUD 

TP there is no mist and no cloud the ground gets very 
hard. And may we not also say that some of the 
noblest and finest virtues which adorn our lives are children 
of the mist and the cloud? I mean those graces which I 
call spiritual ferns, and which need much shade and moisture 
if they are to grow and be perfected. I mean ferns like 
humility, modesty, reticence, reverence, patience, sympathy, 
and even the finer and rarer sorts of love itself. You 
can not grow these without mystery. You will find them 
in choicest and in richest fashion where the clouds have 
gathered, where the mists have been thick and low, and 
where the ground is wet with dews and rains. 

John Henry Jowett. 


163 


May 26 

S WEET Virgin Mary 
Lives again, they say,— 

Heaven’s azure fairy,— 

In those born on her day. 

Eyes of such are full of dreams, 

Lovelier are few. 

And their quiet spirits seem 
To dress in Mary’s blue. 

Every gentle maiden 
To that birthday true, 

Is with Christ-love laden— 

Be it so with you. 

Isabel Fislce Conant. 


164 


May 27 

A PRAYER AT THE END OF SPRING 

I F I have been too sombre, Lord, 

For daffodils that light the Spring; 

If I was all too dull to see 

The wiser worship that they bring, 

Lord, God of laughter and delight. 

Remember not this thing. 

If I have walked in April ways, 

Too solemn and too grave, alas, 

For all Thy mirthful, careless leaves. 

Thy gay and gallant-hearted grass. 

Lord, stay me till I learn to heed 
Thy laughter where I pass. 

And when there comes another Spring 
Of tulips rising from the earth, 

If I would go too darkly by 

To sober things of lesser worth, 

Lord, halt me where those pulpits are, 

To hear Thee preaching mirth. 

David Morton. 


Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910. 


165 


May 28 

BUNCHES OF GRAPES 

UNCHES of grapes,” says Timothy; 

“Pomegranates pink,” says Elaine; 

“A junket of cream and a cranberry tart 
For me,” says Jane. 

“Love-in-a-mist,” says Timothy; 

“Primroses pale,” says Elaine; 

“A nosegay of pinks and mignonette 
For me,” says Jane. 

“Chariots of gold,” says Timothy; 

“Silvery wings,” says Elaine; 

“A bumpety ride in a wagon of hay 
For me,” says Jane. 

Walter Hamal. 




166 


May 29 

A SPRING LILT 


T HROUGH the silver mist 
Of the blossom-spray 
Trill the orioles: list 
To their joyous lay! 

“What in all the world, in all the world ,’’ they say, 
“Is half so sweet, so sweet, is half so sweet as May?” 


“June! June! June!” 

Low croon 

The brown bees in the clover. 

“Sweet! Sweet! Sweet!” 

Repeat 

The robins, nested over. 

Unknown. 


167 


May 30 

WRITTEN BY A YOUNG FRENCH SOLDIER 


T THINK ceaselessly of tlie France of to-morrow, of that 
young France whose hour is at hand. A consecrated 
France it must be, in which there will be no purpose in 
life save Duty. Men will live only so far as they realize 
their duty and strive to fulfill it. . . . 

“Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” 
Perfect through ourselves —that is, developing our personal¬ 
ities to their utmost limit, making them yield the last least 
thing of which they are capable, and bringing them up to 
the ideal stature of Christ. . . . 

It is not for death that I would prepare myself, but for 
life. For life eternal, no doubt, but for the more imme¬ 
diate matter of earthly life as well. When the war is over 
and I go home, I must be a changed being. I shall have 
no right to be as I formerly was—or the lesson will have 
been in vain. Through the war mankind must be reborn, 
and is it not our duty to be reborn first of all? . . . 

A grave moment is at hand. There is to be a bayonet 
charge. If I do not come back, one thing only I ask: 
may the tiny flame of consecrated fire which was in me 
descend upon those whom I loved and who loved me—upon 
all my comrades in faith and toil. 

Alfred Casalis. 


Memorial Day. 

Jeanne d’Arc, 1412-1431. 


168 


May 31 


O NE who never turn’d his back but march’d breast 
forward. 

Never doubted clouds would break, 

Never dream’d, though right were worsted, wrong would 
triumph, 

Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, 

Sleep to wake. 

No, at noonday in the bustle of man’s work-time 
Greet the unseen with a cheer! 

Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, 

‘‘Strive and thrive!” cry “Speed,—fight on, fare ever 
There as here! ’ ’ 

'Robert Browning. 


169 


































































* 







JUNE 


O YE Lightnings and Clouds, bless ye the Lord: 

praise him and magnify him forever. 

O let the Earth bless the Lord: 

yea, let it praise him and magnify him forever. 


171 


JUNE’S MAGIC 


gHADOW! the fairest gift of June.” 


172 




June 1 


W HAT is it like to be a rose?” 

Old Boses, softly, “Try and see.” 

Anna Hempstead Branch. 


173 


June 2 

LOVE PLANTED A ROSE 


L OVE planted a rose, 

And the world turned sweet. 

Where the wheat-field blows 
Love planted a rose. 

Up the mill-wheel’s prose 
Ran a music-beat. 

Love planted a rose, 

And the world turned sweet. 

Katharine Lee Bates . 

Taken by permission from “Fairy Gold,” by Katharine 
Lee Bates, copyrighted by E. P. Dutton and Company, 
New York. 


174 


June 3 

M IRACLES! Why, everything is a miracle. Life, Death, 
sunrise, the opening rose, the wind in the pines. 

Maurice Hewlett. 


175 


June 4 


GOD 

1 SEE Thee in the distant blue; 

But in the violet’s dell of dew, 

Behold, I breathe and touch Thee too. 

John Bannister Tabb. 


176 


June 5 


O N a spring morning one has only to step out into 
the open country, lift his head to the sky and follow 
his nose. I \e been down in the marshes following my 
nose—enjoying the thorn apples and the wild geraniums, 
talking with a woodpecker and reporting the morning news 
of the woods for an imaginary newspaper. 

David Grayson . 


177 


June 6 


AN OUTDOOR GALLERY 

M Y field’s a pictured story. 

Where every joyous soul 
May have a daisy-glory, 

A wild-rose aureole! 

My rambler is a ladder 
Whose sprays wee angels climb, 

While crimson-lake and madder 
Turn colors quite sublime. 

Were eyes of mine unsealed quite 
To columbine and rose, 

I might behold my field bright 
With Fra Angelicos! 

Isabel FisTce Conant. 


178 


June 7 


O DOWNY dandelion wings. 

Wild-floating wings, like silver spun, 

That dance and glisten in the sun! 

You airy things, you elfin things, 

That June-time always brings. 

. Helen Gray Cone. 







m 


June 8 


gUMMER, with its daisies, runs up to every cottage door. 

Alexander Smith. 


180 






June 9 


T O Him who, named or unnamed, still they trusted, 
Sailed their frail crafts to find an unknown sea. 

St. Columba of Iona. 597 A.D. 


June 10 


WHO’S WHO IN THE BIRDS’ BLUE BOOK 
£1AN you guess the identity of the following birds? 

“Nature’s licensed vagabond.” 

“The carpenter cousins.” 

“The topsy-turvy birds.” 

“A bit of flame in feathers.” 

“The bark bird.” 

“A wandering minstrel.” 

“A bird of gentle ways.” 

“A bird whose clothes always fit him.” 

“The feathered cat.” 

“A herald of spring.” 

“An outlaw among birds.” 


182 


June 11 


ALAN BRECK AND DAVID BALFOUR 


"PRESENTLY after came a crackling in the thicket. 
^ Putting my mouth down to the ground, I whistled a 
note or two of Alan’s air; an answer came, in the like 
guarded tone, and soon we had thralled together in the 
dark. 

“Is this you at last, Davie?” he whispered. 

“Just myself,” said I. 

11 God, man, but I’ve been wearying to see ye! ” says he. 
“I’ve had the longest kind of a time. A’day, I’ve had my 
dwelling into the inside of a stack of hay, where I could 
nae see the nebs of my five fingers; and then two hours 
of it waiting here for you, and you never coming! . . . 
Is this no a bonny morning? Here is a day that looks 
the way that a day ought to . . . and while you were 
sottering and sleeping I have done a thing that maybe 
I do over seldom.” 

“And what was that?” said I. 

“O, just said my prayers,” said he . . . “I feel like 
a gomeral, to be leaving Scotland on a day like this. It 
sticks in my head ... No but what France is a good 
place too,” he explained; “but it’s someway no the same. 
It’s brawer, I believe, but it’s no Scotland! ’ ’ 

'Robert Louis Stevenson. 


183 


June 12 

T HERE’S one comes often as the sun 
And fills my room with morning. 

Olive Tilford Dargan. 


184 


June 13 


FORBEARANCE 

H AST thou named all the birds without a gun? 

Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk? 

At rich men’s tables eaten bread and pulse? 

Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust? 

And loved so well a high behavior 

In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained, 

Nobility more nobly to repay? 

O, be my friend, and teach me to be thine! 

Ralph Waldo Emerson. 


185 


June 14 

L ORD, I do fear 

Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year. 

Edna St. Vincent Millay. 


186 


June 15 


S OON will the high Midsummer pomps come on, 

Soon will the musk carnations, break and swell, 
Soon shall we have the gold-dusted snapdragon, 
Sweet-William with his homely cottage-smell, 

And stocks in fragrant blow; 

Eoses that down the alleys shine afar, 

And open, jasmine-muffled lattices, 

And groups under the dreaming garden trees, 

And the full moon and the white evening-star. 

Matthew Arnold. 


187 


June 16 

4 ‘FOR THEY SHALL POSSESS THE EARTH ’’ 


Y OU who were beauty’s worshipper, 

Her ardent lover, in this place 
You have seen Beauty face to face; 

And known the wistful eyes of her. 

And kissed the hands of Poverty, 

And praised her tattered bravery. 

You shall be humble, give your days 
To silence and simplicity; 

And solitude shall come to be 
The goal of all your winding ways; 

When pride and youthful pomp of words 
Fly far away like startled birds. 

Possessing nothing, you shall know 

The heart of all things in the earth, 

Their secret agonies and mirth, 

The awful innocence of snow, 

The sadness of November leaves, 

The joy of fields of girded sheaves. 

A shelter from the driving rain 

Your high renouncement of desire; 

Food it shall be and wine and fire; 

And Peace shall enter once again 
As quietly as dreams in sleep 
The hidden trysting-place you keep. 

(continued) 


188 


June 17 


“FOR THEY SHALL POSSESS THE EARTH” 

(continued) 


V/’OU shall grow humble as the grass, 
And patient as each slow, dumb beast; 
And as their fellow—yea the least— 
Yield stoat and hedgehog room to pass; 
And learn the ignorance of men 
Before the robin and the wren. 


The things so terrible and sweet 

You strove to say in accents harsh, 

The frogs are croaking in the marsh, 

The crickets chirping at your feet— 

Oh, they can teach you unafraid 
The meaning of the songs you made. 

Till clothed in white humilities, 

Each happening that doth befall, 

Each thought of yours be musical, 

As wind is musical in the trees, 

When strong as sun and clean as dew 
Your old dead songs come back to you. 

Theodore Maynard. 

Reprinted by permission from “Poems,” by Theodore May¬ 
nard. Copyright by Frederick A. Stokes Company. 


189 


June 18 

T HERE is a garden in her face. 

Where roses and white lilies blow; 

A heavenly paradise is the place, 

Wherein all pleasant fruits do grow; 

There cherries grow that none may buy, 

Till Cherry-Ripe themselves do cry. 

Thomas Campion. 


190 


June 19 

OF TRANSIENT BEAUTY 

O OSE-FLOWER and flower of grass and flower of flame 
Drift to the Beauty whence their beauty came. 

Fainter are they, more brief, than this June wind, 

Yet for the impalpable grace they leave behind 
The years may fashion an immortal name. 

Sophie Jewett. 

Reprinted by permission of the publishers, from “ Poems ,’ 1 
by Sophie Jewett. Copyright by Thomas Y. Crowell 
and Company. 


191 


June 20 


FLOWER IN THE CRANNIED WALL 


TT^LOWER in the crannied wall, 

A I pluck you out of the crannies;— 

Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 

Little flower—but if I could understand 
What you are, root and all, and all in all, 

I should know what God and man is. 

Alfred Lord Tennyson 


192 


June 21 


THE STARS OF THE SUMMER SOLSTICE 


HE gardens of the sky are not the same in autumn 
A as in summer. It is hardly an exaggeration to say 
that there is as great a variety of color-tones among the 
stars as among flowers. Although the great majority of 
stars approximate white, there are, nevertheless, red stars, 
green stars, blue stars, lilac stars, yellow stars, orange stars, 
indigo stars, and violet stars, and stars of other tints and 
shades . 11 

On this, the longest day in the year, the beautiful star 
Vega is queen of the sky in the northeast; under the tele¬ 
scope she is the color of a sapphire. Fancy a sun like 
ours only outshining ours a hundred times. 

Another wonder of the sky is to be found in Hercules. 
If you look through the telescope you may see “the great 
cluster of Hercules, ” where fifteen thousand thousand surfs 
are burning in one compact cluster. 

Still another constellation toward the south is Sagittarius, 
the Archer, looking a bit like the Dipper; near it is an¬ 
other strange phenomenon, a place where there is a “ hole in 
the sky. ” 

Buried in the Milky Way east of Lyra is the Northern 
Cross, Cygnus, larger than the famous constellation of the 
Southern Cross, which is seen only in equatorial waters and 
has become the loved emblem of Australia. 

Low in the West is the planet Venus, comrade of summer. 

Adapted by permission of the publishers from “A Year 
with the Stars ,’’ by Garrett Serviss. Copyright, 1910, 
by Harper and Brothers. 


193 


June 22 


QUEEN MAB 

S HE comes 

In shape no bigger than an agate-stone 
On the fore-finger of an alderman, 

Drawn with a team of little atomies. 

Her wagon-spokes made of long spinners’ legs; 

The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers; 

The traces of the smallest spider’s web; 

The collars, of the moonshine’s wat’ry beams: 

Her whip, of cricket’s bone; the lash of film: 

Her waggoner, a Small gray-coated gnat, 

Her chariot is an empty hazel nut. 

Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub, 

Time out of mind the fairies’ coach-makers. 

And in this state she gallops night by night 
Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love. 

William Shakespeare. 


194 


/ 


June 23 
THE BRIBE 

T HE butterflies are bright above the trail; 

They lace the bush with scarlet and with blue:— 
O little dream, so faithful and so frail, 

The jewel of their beauty is for you. 

Hard on the Southern Cross the Centaurs ride; 

They point their starry spears the long night through. 
O little restless dream, be still and bide! 

The jewel of that beauty is for you. 

The white man knows the treasures of the land,— 

The dawn, the secret flower, the silver dew;— 

O little dream, hold out your hollowed hand; 

The jewel of that beauty is for you. 

Jean Kenyon Mackenzie. 


195 


June 24 

THE WORLD’S MISER 


A MISER with an eager face 

Sees that each roseleaf is in place. 

He keeps beneath strong bolts and bars 
The piercing beauty of the stars. 

The colours of the dying day 
He hoards as treasure—well He may!— 

And saves with care (lest they be lost) 

The dainty diagrams of frost. 

He counts the hairs of every head, 

And grieves to see a sparrow dead. 

II 

Among the yellow primroses 
He holds His summer palaces, 

And sets the grass about them all 
To guard them as His spearmen small. 

He fixes on each wayside stone 
A mark to shew it as His Own. 

And knows when raindrops fall through air 
Whether each single one be there, 

That gathered into ponds and brooks 
They may become His picture-books, 

To show in every spot and place 
The living glory of His face. 

Theodore Maynard. 

Reprinted by permission from 11 Poems, ’ ’ by Theodore May¬ 
nard. Copyright by Frederick A. Stokes Company. 

196 


June 25 


THE FISHING-POLE 


A FISHING-POLE r S a curious thing: 

It’s made of just a stick and string: 

A boy at one end and a wish; 

And on the other end a fish! 

Mary Carolyn Davies. 


197 


June 26 


HAT is it to hate poetry? . . . it is to have no 



▼ V little dreams and fancies, no holy memories of 
golden days, to be unmoved by serene midsummer evenings 
or dawn over wild lands, singing or sunshine, little tales told 
by the fire a long while since, glow-worm and briar-rose; 
for of all those things is poetry made. It is to be cut 
off forever from the fellowship of great men that are gone; 
to see men and women without their halos and the world 
without its glory; to miss the meaning lurking behind 
common things; it is to beat one’s hands all day against 
the gates of Fairy-land, and to find that they are shut 
and the country empty and its kings gone hence. 


Lord Dunsany. 


198 


June 27 

HHHE poets have taught how full of wonders is the night; 
^ and the night of blindness has its wonders too. We 
differ, blind and seeing, one from another, not in our 
senses, but in the use we make of them, in the imagination 
and courage with which we seek wisdom beyond our 
senses. 

Helen Keller. 


199 


June 28 

ART THOU POOR 

A RT thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers? 

O sweet content! 

Art thou rich, yet is thy mind perplex’d? 

O punishment! 

Dost thou laugh to see how fools are vex’d 
To add to golden numbers golden numbers? 

O sweet content! O sweet, O sweet content! 

Work apace, apace, apace, apace; 

Honest labour bears a lovely face; 

Then hey nonny nonny—hey nonny nonny! 

Canst drink the waters of the crisped spring? 

O sweet content! 

Swim’st thou in wealth, yet sink’st in thine own tears? 
O punishment! 

Then he that patiently want’s burden bears, 

No burden bears, but is a king, a king! 

O sweet content! O sweet, O sweet content! 
Work apace, apace, apace, apace; 

Honest labour bears a lovely face; 

Then hey nonny nonny—hey nonny nonny! 

Thomas Delcker, 1575-1641. 


200 


June 29 


HO said, Pan is dead? Some fawning rogue who 



* ▼ wanted to pay a compliment. Pan dead! He is not 
dead and will never die. Wherever there’s a noon-day hush 
over the Weald, wherever there’s mystery in the forest, 
there is Pan. Every far-sighted, unblinking old shepherd 
up here afield with his dog knows all about him, though 
he’ll never tell you anything of what he knows. He hasn’t 
got his name right, very likely; but he has got Mm. 


Maurice Hewlett. 


201 


June 30 
VACATION 

I HAVE shut my books and hidden my slate 
And tossed my satchel across the gate. 

My school is out for a summer of rest, 

And now for the schoolroom I love the best! 

My schoolroom lies on the meadow wide, 

Where under the clover the sunbeams hide. 

Where the long vines cling to the mossy bars 
And the daisies twinkle like fallen stars. 

My lessons are written in clouds and trees, 

And no one whispers, except the breeze, 

That something blows—from a secret place, 

A stray, sweet blossom against my face. 

My teacher is patient, and never yet 
A lesson of hers did I once forget, 

For wonderful lore do her lips impart, 

And all her lessons are learned by heart. 

Oh, come! Oh, come! Or we shall be late, 

And Autumn will fasten the golden gate. 

Of all the schoolrooms east or west. 

The school of Nature I love the best. 

Katharine Lee Bates. 

Taken by permission from “Fairy Gold,” by Katharine Lee 
Bates, copyrighted by E. P. Dutton and Company, New 
York. 


202 


JULY 


O YE Mountains and Hills, bless ye the Lord: 
praise him and magnify him forever. 


O all ye Green Things upon the earth, bless ye the Lord: 
praise him and magnify him forever. 


203 


JULY’S MAGIC 


KEEN! Wliat a world of green l' ’ 


204 


July 1 


U NLOCK the door this evening 

And let your gate swing wide, 

Let all who ask for shelter 
Come speedily inside. 

What if your yard be narrow, 

What if your house be small? 

There is a Guest is coming 
Will glorify it all. 

Joyce Kilmer. 


• 205 


July 2 


fT'WO Voices are there; one is of the Sea, 

* One of the Mountains; each a mighty voice, 

In both from age to age thou didst rejoice, 

They were thy chosen music, Liberty. 

William Wordsworth. 


206 


July 3 


L ET all the ends, the ends thou aimst at, he thy coun¬ 
try’s, thy God’s, and Truth’s. 

William Shakespeare. 


207 


July 4 


C OME swiftly, 0 wondrous to-morrow 
That shall render to Justice a soul, 

When the nations shall rise from their sorrow, 

The sick and the helpless be whole. 

Let us cry it aloud from the steeple, 

Let us shout where the darkness is hurled, 

“Lo, look to the light of the people, 

AMERICA, Torch of the world! ’ ’ 

Angela Morgan. 


208 


July 5 


W 


HAT wealth God has! He gives each day some¬ 
thing to distinguish it from every other. 

Leo Tolstoi. 


209- 


i 


July 6 


B EAUTY? What is it but a new way of approach? 

For wilderness, for foreignness, I have no need to go 
a mile: I have only to come up through my thicket or cross 
my field from my own roadside—and behold, a new heaven 
and a ne^v earth! 

Things grow old and stale, not because they are old, but 
because we cease to see them. 

David Grayson. 


210 


July 7 

IN A NEIGHBORLY WORLD 


A S in a childish game I stand 
Blindfolded and alone. 

And trembling reach an eager hand 
To kindred all unknown. ” 


“The Sphinx-moHi clothed in downy hues, 

In woolly whites and fawns and blues, 

Goes fluttering through the evening dews.” 

“Here are sweetpeas on tiptoe, for a flight, 

With wings of gentle flush o’er delicate white, 

And taper fingers catching at all things, 

To bind them all about with tiny rings.” 

‘ 1 The humming-bird, which arrived at the same time, was 
Wonderfully beautiful, especially when he flew close to your 
face and remained suspended motionless on mist-like wings 
for a few moments, his feathers looking and glittering like 
minute emerald scales.” 


211 



July 8 

A PRAYER 


T EACH me, Father, how to go 
Softly as the grasses grow; 

Hush my soul to meet the shock 
Of the wild world as a rock; 

But my spirit, propt with power, 

Make as simple as a flower. 

Let the dry heart fill its cup. 

Like a poppy looking up; 

Let life lightly wear her crown. 

Like a poppy looking down, 

When its heart is filled with dew 
And its life begins anew. 

Teach me. Father, how to be 
Kind, and patient as a tree. 

Joyfully the crickets croon 
Under shady oak at noon; 

Beetle, on his mission bent. 

Tarries in that cooling tent. 

Let me, also, cheer a spot, 

Hidden field or garden grot—, 

Place where passing souls can rest 
On the way and be their best. 

Edwin Marlcham. 


212 


July 9 

A RUNE OF HOSPITALITY 

T SAW a stranger yestereen; 

A I put food in the eating place, 

Drink in the drinking place, 

Music in the listening place; 

And, in the sacred name of the Triune, 

He blessed myself and all my house, 

My cattle and all my dear ones. 

And the lark said in her song, 

Often, often, often. 

Goes the Christ in the stranger’s guise; 

Often, often, often. 

Goes the Christ in the stranger’s guise. 

Old Gaelic Rune. 


213 


July 10 

THE MOUNTAINS ARE A LONELY FOLK 

T HE mountains they are silent folk 
They stand afar—alone, 

And the clouds that kiss their brows at night 
Hear neither sigh nor groan. 

Each bears him in his ordered place 
As soldiers do, and bold and high 
They fold their forests round their feet 
And bolster up the sky. 

Hamlin Garland. 


214 


July 11 

THE MOUNTAIN 

H IGH on a summit of mountain 

With the far world at its feet, 

Mine be the wide horizon 

Where earth and sky shall meet! 

By day I shall have the sunlight 
And the vast blue dome of sky; 

By night I shall have the starlight 
And a white moon drifting by! 

The free wild wind shall sing me 
The chant of the far away 
That comes from beyond the daybreak 
With the first dim dawn of day; 

And I, in the chant of the wind’s song, 

Will find my dreams and be 
Free like the wind on the mountain— 
y That sings of its dreams to me. 

Patten Beard. 


215 


July 12 
MAGIC 


W ITHIN my hand I hold 

A piece of lichen-spotted stone— 

Each fleck red-gold— 

And with closed eyes I hear the moan 
Of solemn winds round naked crags 
Of Colorado’s mountains. The snow 
Lies deep about me. Gray and old 
Hags of cedars, gaunt and bare. 

With streaming, tangled hair. 

Snarl endlessly. White-winged and proud, 

With stately step and queenly air, 

A glittering, cool and silent cloud 
Upon me sails. 

The wind wails, 

And from the canon stern and steep 
I hear the furious waters leap. 

Hamlin Garland. 


216 


July 13 


JjTVERYTHING divine runs with light feet. 

David Grayson. 


217 


July 14 

LISTENING (An Indian Song) 


T HE noise of passing feet 
On the prairie— 

Is it men or gods 

Who come out of the silence? 

Alice Corbin. 


218 


July 15 

A PRAIRIE 


HPO make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,— 

-*■ One clover, and a bee, 

And revery. 

The revery alone will do 
If bees are few. 

Emily Dickinson. 

Reprinted by permission of the publishers from 1 ‘Poems /’ 
by Emily Dickinson, copyright by Little, Brown and 
Company. 


\ 


219 


July 16 

THE BUTTERFLY 


f HOLD you at last in my hand, 

Exquisite child of the air. 

Can I ever understand 

How you grew to be so fair? 

• 

You came to my linden tree 
To taste its delicious sweet, 

I sitting here in the shadow and shine 
Playing around its feet. 

Now I hold you fast in my hand, 

You marvelous butterfly, 

Till you help me to understand 
The eternal mystery. 

From that creeping thing in the dust 
To this shining bliss in the blue! 

God give me the courage to trust— 

I can break my chrysalis too! 

Alice Freeman Palmer. 


220 


July 17 


M ORNING air! If men will not drink of this at the 
fountain head of the day, why, then, we must even 
bottle up some and sell it in shops, for the benefit of 
those who have lost their subscription ticket to morning¬ 
time in this world. 

Henry David Thoreau. 


221 


July 18 


FROM THE LETTERS OF THE MAN WHO NEVER 
GREW UP: TO A CHILD 

M Y dear Gertrude,—This will not do, you know, send¬ 
ing one more kiss every time by post: the parcel 
gets so heavy it is quite expensive. When the postman 
brought the last letter, he looked quite grave, 1 ‘Two 
pounds to pay, sir!” he said. “Extra weight, sir!” (I 
think he cheats a little, by the way. He often makes me 
pay two pounds when I think it should be pence.) 1 ‘Oh, 
if you please, Mr. Postman! ” I said, going down grace¬ 
fully on one knee (I wish you could see me go down on 
one knee to a postman—it’s a pretty sight), “do excuse 
me just this once! It’s only from a little girl! ” 

“Only from a little girl,” he growled. “What are 
little girls made of?” “Sugar and spice,” I began to 

say, “and all that’s ni-” But he interrupted me. “No, 

I don’t mean that. I mean, what’s the good of little 
girls, when they send such heavy letters?” “Well, they’re 
not much good, certainly,” I said, sadly. 

* ‘ Mind you don’t get any more such letters, ’ ’ he said . . . 
I promised him we would send each other very few letters— 
“Only two thousand four hundred and seventy, or so,” I 
said. “Oh!” he said, “a little number like that doesn’t 
signify. What I meant is, you mustn’t send many.” 

I sometimes wish I was back on the shore at Sandown; 
don’t you? 

Your loving friend, Lewis Carroll. 


222 


July 19 


rpo love playthings as well as a child, to lead an ad- 
venturous and honourable youth, and to settle, when 
the time arrives, into a green and smiling age, is to be a 
good artist in life and deserve well of yourself and your 
neighbor. 

'Robert Louis Stevenson. 


223 


July 20 

GOOD-MORROW 

P ACK, clouds, away! and welcome, day! 

With night we banish sorrow; 

Sweet air, blow soft; mount, lark, aloft 
To give my love good-morrow! 

Wings from the wind to please her mind, 

Notes from the lark I’ll borrow! 

Bird, prune thy wing, nightingale sing, 

To give my Love good-morrow! 

To give my Love good-morrow! 

Notes from them all I’ll borrow. 

Wake from thy nest, robin red-breast! 

Sing, birds, in every furrow! 

And from each bill let music shrill 
Give my fair Love good-morrow! 

Blackbird and thrush in every bush, 

Stare, linnet, and cocksparrow, 

You pretty elves, among yourselves 
Sing my fair Love good-morrow! 

To give my Love good-morrow! 

Sing, birds, in every furrow! 

Thomas Heywood, 1570-1650. 


224 


July 21 

THE BARGAIN 

M Y true love hath my heart, and I have his, 

By just exchange one for the other given: 

I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss, 

There never was a better bargain driven: 

My true love hath my heart, and I have his. 

His heart in me keeps him and me in one, 

My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides: 

He loves my heart, for once it was his own, 

I cherish his because in me it bides: 

My true love hath my heart, and I have his. 

Sir Philip Sidney , 1554-1586. 


225 


July 22 


A LL that I know 

Of a certain star 
Is, it can throw 

(Like the angled spar) 

Now a dart of red, 

Now a dart of blue; 

Till my friends have said 
They would fain see, too. 

My star that dartles the red and the blue! 

Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled: 

They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it. 
What matter to me if their star is a world? 

Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it. 

Eobert Browning. 


226 


July. 23 

CONCEKNING LOVE 


1 WISH she would not ask me if I love the Kitten more 
than her. 

Of course I love her. But I love the Kitten too: and It 
has fur. 

Josephine Preston Peabody. 


227 


July 24 

S O let us love and understand, 

Whose hearts are hidden in God’s hand. 

«*• Anna Hempstead Branch. 


228 


July 25 

ST. CHRISTOPHER OF THE GAEL 


B E not afraid: 

Look, I am Light. 

A great star 

Seen from afar 

In the darkness of night. 

I am Light, 

Be not afraid, 

Wade, wade, 

Into the deep flood! 

Think of the Bread, 

The Wine and the Bread 
That are my Flesh and Blood. 

Cross, cross the Flood 
Sure is the goal 
Be not afraid 
O Soul, 

Be not afraid. 

Fiona Macleod (William Sharp) 


St. Christopher, 3rd century. 


229 


July 26 


I KNOW thou wilt surrender not to pain; 

Thou wilt look never forth from coward eyes; 

Thou would’st not barter truth for Paradise; 

Thou could 'st not think that ease and peace were gain. 

Sophie Jewett. 

Keprinted by permission of the publishers, from li Poems / 1 
by Sophie Jewett. Copyright by Thomas Y. Crowell 
and Company. 


230 


July 27 

TWO SPARROWS 


^T^O creatures upon earth, 

Our price one farthing worth; 

To everlasting Love 
All price above. 

John Bannister Tabb. 


r 


231 




July 28 


F OLLOW thou Me. For what is it to thee whether 
this man be such or such, or that others do or say thus 
and thus? 

Thomas d Kempis: marked by General George Gordon in 
a copy of the ‘ 1 Imitation of Christ . 1 ’ 


232 


July 29 


TDEALS are to run races with. The moment we stop 
chasing them they sit down, become opinions. 


233 


July 30 


gROKEN by it I too may be. Bow to it I never will. 

Abraham Lincoln. 


234 


July 31 


T HOU shalt grow strong again, 

Confident, tender,— 

Battle with wrong again, 

Be truth’s defender,— 

Of the immortal train, 

Born to attempt, attain, 

Never surrender. 

Bliss Carman. 




235 









































> 





























































































AUGUST 


O YE Seas and Floods, bless ye the Lord: 

praise him and magnify him forever. 


O ye Whales, and all that move in the waters, bless ye the 
Lord: 

praise him and magnify him forever. 


237 


AUGUST’S MAGIC 


T HESE are the hills, these are the woods, 
These are my starry solitudes.” 

238 


August 1 


T HE Sea said, “Come,” to the Brook. 

The Brook said, 11 Let me grow! ’ 1 
The Sea said, “Then you will be a Sea— 

I want a brook! Come now 1 ’ ’ 

Emily DicTcinson. 

Reprinted by permission of the publishers from ‘ 1 The 
Single Hound,” by Emily Dickinson; copyright by 
Little, Brown and Company. 


239 


K 


August 2 

THE SEA BIRD TO THE WAVE 


O N and on, 

O white brother! 

Thunder does not daunt thee! 

How thou movest! 

By thine impulse— 

With no wing! 

Fairest thing 

The wide sea shows me! 

On and on 
O white brother! 

Art thou gone! 

Padraic Colum. 

Reprinted from ‘‘ Wild Earth,'' Henry Holt and Company, 
New York. By arrangement with the publishers. 


240 


August 3 

THE INLANDER 

I NEVER climb a high hill 
Or gaze across the lea, 

But oh, beyond the two of them, 

Beyond the height and blue of them, 

I'm looking for the sea. 

Theodosia Garrison. 


241 


August 4 


T HE plain has moods like the sea: 

It is filled with voices and stir 
Of wings. 

Hamlin Garland. 


242 


August 5 

IN A COEN-FIELD 

W HO was it passed me, Ms body a-throbbing? 

Who but Sir Humblebee home from his robbing! 

What is that crackle of chariots whirling? 

’Tis Cricket Achilles where green smoke is curling. 

And who is it comes on the bloom-ocean steering? 

Bold Dragonfly Cortez, a-tacking and veering! 

Edwin Marlcham. 


243 


August 6 


A UGUST is laughing across the sky, 

Laughing while paddle, canoe and I 
Drift, drift. 

Where the hills uplift 

On either side of the current swift. 

The river rolls in its rocky bed, 

My paddle is plying its way ahead. 

Dip, dip, 

When the waters flip 

In foam as over their breast we slip. 

E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake). 


244 


August 7 

G OOD luck! and up with you, for it is a glorious morn¬ 
ing! 

Henry van ByTce. 


245 


August 8 


'T'HE important thing to me about a road, as about life 
* and literature, is not that it goes anywhere, but that 
it is livable while it goes. 

David Grayson. 






246 


I 


August 9 

THE OPEN DOOR 

/'"'V FTEN, as I have walked along a country road, idly 
pleased with the world about me, I have passed an old 
barn, with great doors flung wide front and back, so that 
one could look through them to the meadows behind. It is 
the same country I have been passing,—fields, bushes, fence¬ 
lines, a bit of hill and sky,—but the great doorways framing 
it in timbers and shadow create thereby a certain en¬ 
hancement of its values, so that, invariably, looking through, 
one gets one ’s impression with something added, a height¬ 
ening of perception that is strangely arresting. 

What is it that the big barn doors do? They limit, of 
course, they cut a little piece out of the wholeness of things, 
they say to us, “Never mind the rest, take just this, look 
at it in just this way—and now see how beautiful it is! ” 
Contributors Club: The Atlantic Monthly. 


247 


August 10 


HERE’S no music like a little river’s. It plays the 



* same tune (and that’s the favorite) over and over 
again, and yet does not weary of it like men fiddlers. It 
takes the mind out of doors; and though we should be 
grateful for good houses, there is, after all, no house like 
God’s out-of-doors. And lastly, sir, it quiets a man down 
like saying his prayers. 


Robert Louis Stevenson . 


\ 









248 


August 11 


HP HIMBLEBERRY, salmonberry, mountain ash, and chin- 
* quapin, 

Hard-hack, black cap, elderberry blue, 

Blackberry, huckleberry, rhododendron, sword fern, 

Woolly manzanita—to be riding through 
The heavy brush about the trail, at dusk once more! 

When all the gold is spilling on the sky’s wide floor! 

Mary Carolyn Davies. 


249 


August 12 
MEASURES 

M EASURE grist by the millful, 

Dew by the daffodilful, 

April clouds by the skyful, 

Tears by Ophelia's eyeful; 

Measure leaves by the elmful; 

Slaves by the tyrant's realmful. 

Green-capped gnomes by the hillful, 

Rhymes by Romeo's quillful; 

Measure sweets by the jarful, 

Dreams by the brooding starful, 

Robes by the bridal chestful, 

Songs by Bobolink's breastful. 

Thorns by the rose's stemful. 

Gems by the diademful, 

Gold and dust by the cartful, 

Only love by the heartful. 

Katharine Lee Bates. 

Reprinted by permission of the publishers, from * 1 America 
the Beautiful and Other Poems," by Katharine Lee 
Bates; copyright by Thomas Y. Crowell and Com¬ 
pany. 


L 


250 



August 13 

J F there are not songs inside bubbles, what is in them ? 

Bug aid Stewart Wallcer. 


251 


August 14 

W HEN the dark pansies nod to say 
Good morning to the marigolds, 

Their velvet taciturnity 
Reveals as much as it withholds. 

I always half expect to hear 

Some hint of what they mean to do; 

But never is their fine reserve 
Betrayed beyond a smile or two. 

Yet very welf at times I seem 
To understand their reticence. 

And so long since, I came to love 
My little brothers by the fence. 

Perhaps some August afternoon, 

When earth is only half-aware, 

They will unlock their heart for once,— 

How sad if I should not be there! 

Bliss Carman. 


252 


August 15 


j jQLLYHOCKS in a double row and all my own! 

Sarah Orne Jewett. 


253 


August 16 


N ATURE passes the dishes far more rapidly than we can 
help ourselves. 

David Grayson. 


254 


August 17 

G O back to the simple life, be contented with simple 
food, simple pleasures, simple clothes. Work hard, 
pray hard, play hard. Work, eat, recreate and sleep. Do it 
all courageously. We have a victory to win. 

Herbert Hoover. 


\ 


255 



August 18 

L ITTLE things may be important by what they draw 
after them. 

Henry Ward Beecher. 


256 


August 19 

S IMPLICITY, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your 
affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a 
thousand; instead of a million, count half a dozen; and 
keep your accounts on your thumb nail. 

Henry David Thoreau. 


257 


August 20 


O RDER is a lovely thing; 

On disarray it lays its wing, 

Teaching simplicity to sing. 

It has a meek and lowly grace, 

Quiet as a nun’s face. 

Lo—I will have thee in this place! 

Tranquil well of deep delight, 

Transparent as the water, bright— 

All things that shine through thee appear 
As stones through water, sweetly clear. 

Thou clarity, 

That with angelic charity 
Revealest beauty where thou art. 

Spread thyself like a clean pool. 

Then all the things that in thee are 
Shall seem more spiritual and fair, 

Reflections from serener air— 

Sunken shapes of many a star 
In the high heavens set afar. 

Anna Hempstead Branch. 


258 


jr 


August 21 

ANGELIC SERVICE 


N O ungel is so high 

But serveth clowns and kings 
And doeth lowly things; 

He in this serviceable love can see 
The symbol of some heavefily mystery,— 

So common things grow wings. 

No angel bravely dressed 
In lark-spur colored gown, 

But he will bend him down 

And sweep with careful art the meanest floor, 

Singing the while he sweeps and toiling more 
Because he wears a crown. 

Set water on to boil, 

An angel helps thee straight; 

Kneeling beside the grate 

With pursed mouth he bloweth up the flame, 

Chiding the tardy kettle that for shame 
Would make an angel wait. 

And that same toil-worn broom— 

So humble in thine eyes, 

Perchance had donned disguise 
And is a seraph on this errand bent, 

To show thee service is a sacrament 
And Love wears servant’s guise. 

Winnifred M. Letts. 

Taken by permission from ‘ ‘ The Spires of Oxford and Other 
Poems,” by Winnifred M. Letts; copyrighted by E. P. 
Dutton and Company, New York. 

259 


August 22 

Lo, now, my shoes! 

They cannot help but dance when thou dost play, 

For they are woven of spells and charms and dreams 
And emptiness and magic. 

Anna Hempstead Branch. 


260 


August 23 


I COME in the little things, 

Saith the Lord: 

My starry wings 
I do forsake. 

Love ’s highway of humility to take: 

Meekly I fit my stature to your need. 

In beggar’s part 

About your gates I shall not cease to plead— 

As man, to speak with man— 

Till by such art 

I shall achieve my immemorial plan, 

Pass the low lintel of the human heart. 

Evelyn Underhill. 

Taken by permission from “Immanence,” by Evelyn Under¬ 
hill; copyrighted by E. P. Dutton and Company, New 

York. 


261 


August 24 


A YOUNG girl, you know, is something' like a temple. 

You pass by and wonder what mysterious rites are 
going on in there—what prayers—what visions 1 

Joseph Conrad. 


262 


> 



August 25 

ON THE BIRTH OF A CHILD 


L O—to the battle-ground of life, 

Child, you have come, like a conquering shout, 
Out of a struggle—into strife; 

Out of a darkness—into doubt. 


Girt with the fragile armor of youth, 

Child, you must ride into endless wars, 

With the sword of protest, the buckler of truth, 

And a banner of love to sweep the stars. 

About you the world’s despair will surge; 

Into defeat you must plunge and grope— 

Be to the faltering an urge; 

Be to the hopeless years a hope! 

Be to the darkened world a flame; 

Be to its unconcern a blow— 

For out of its pain and tumult you came, 

And into its tumult and pain you go. 

Louis Untermeyer. 


263 


August 26 
WHO IS SILVIA? 

HO is Silvia? What is she? 



▼ ▼ That all the swains commend her? 
Holy, fair, and wise is she; 

The heaven such grace did lend her, 
That she might admired be. 

Is she kind as she is fair? 

For beauty lives with kindness: 

Love doth to her eyes repair, 

But I respectfully decline 

To help him of this blindness; 

And, being help’d, inhabits there. 

Then to Silvia let us sing, 

That Silvia is excelling; 

She excells each mortal thing 
Upon the dull earth dwelling: 

To her let us garlands bring. 


William Shakespeare, 1564-1616. 


264 


August 27 

FREEDOM IN DRESS 

S TILL to be neat, still to be drest. 

As you were going to a feast. 

Still to be powdered, still perfumed,— 

Lady, it is to be presumed, 

Though art’s hid causes are not found, 

All is not sweet, all is not sound. 

Give me a look, give me a face, 

That makes simplicity a grace; 

Robes loosely flowing, hair as free,— 

Such sweet neglect more taketh me 
Than all the adulteries of art; 

They strike mine eyes, but not my heart. 

Ben Jonson, 1573-1637. 


265 


August 28 


P RETENSION may sit still, but cannot act. A man 
passes for that he is worth. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson. 


0 


266 


August 29 

T ISN’T life that matters! ’Tis the courage you bring 
to it. 

Hugh Walpole. 




267 


August 30 

AN OBJECTOR 


S OME folk, * ’ the Monkey says, ‘ 1 there be 
That claim descent from mine and me; 

But I respectfully decline 

Such compliments to me and mine. ” \ 

John Bannister Tahh. 


208 


August 31 

THE ELEPHANT 

W HEN people call this beast to mind. 

They marvel more and more, 

At such a little tail behind, 

So LAEGE a trunk before. 

Hilaire Belloc. 


269 








SEPTEMBER 


O ALL ye Fowls of tlie air, bless ye the Lord: 
praise him and magnify him forever. 

O all ye Beasts and Cattle, bless ye the Lord: 
praise him and magnify him forever. 


271 


SEPTEMBER’S MAGIC 
T LOOK into the crater of the ant.” 


272 


September 1 


rji HERE’S no smoke in the lark’s house. 


Old Gaelic 'proverb. 


September 2 

THE HOUSE AND THE ROAD 


T HE little Road says, Go, 

The little House says, Stay; 

And O, it’s bonny here at home, 

But I must go away. 

The little Road, like me, 

Would seek and turn and know; 

And forth I must, to learn the things 
The little Road would show! 

And go I must, my dears, 

And journey while I may, 

Though heart be sore for the little House 
That had no word but, Stay. 

Maybe no other way 

Your child could ever know 

Why a little House would have you stay, 

When a little Road says, Go. 

Josephine Preston Peabody. 


274 


September 3 

OFF FOR COLLEGE 


OING to college? Then I congratulate you. Life, 



which seems to me none too prodigal to most of us, is 
giving you your chance. 

In spite of what some people say, going to college is seeing 
life. Outside of college one usually sees only slices of life. 
Here one sees it whole. The curriculum, to the one who 
has eyes to see and ears to hear, thrills with vitality. 

Beware the reactions. Life concentrated thus may wear 
upon you. You need to relax. Otherwise, seeing life too 
steadily, some day you and your work will all seem futile 
in the light of the great world's course, and college life 
will seem abnormal, shut-in, removed from reality. It is not, 
actually, but you have made it so. 

Fit into life. Do not impose your discovery of Life's 
cross-currents on others. Remember what Rosalind said to 
melancholy Jaques, the much-travelled in life: “I Had 
rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to 
make me sad—and to travel for it too! ’' And the world 
is of her opinion. 

The girl in your hall is the test of your theory of 
life. 

You will always be the kind of citizen you are now. 

Because you comprehend life better, you will make it 
more comprehensive. 


Henry Noble MacCracIcen. 


275 


September 4 

A FATHER COUNSELS HIS FRESHMAN SON 

D ON’T wear your tires out scorching too early in life. 

Don’t dawdle; don’t scramble. When you work, work; 
when you play, play; when you rest, rest; and think all the 
time. 

We have to take things as they come and deal with them 
as we can. The trick is to get the kernel and eliminate 
the shuck. 

Plan to get into the game if you have to go on your 
hands and knees. 

There is no one to whom you are not related if only you 
can find the relation. 

You will have to think more or less about yourself, be¬ 
cause that sort of thing belongs to your time of life, . . . 
but don’t overdo it. 

E. S. Martin. 


276 


September 5 

T HIS thy child, a woman earnest-eyed, 

Who wears thy gracious favors worthily, 

Pledges her honest faith, her constant pride, 

To live her life as one who holds in trust 
God’s gold to give again, who fearless must 
Face the great days to be. 

Sophie Jewett. 

Keprinted by permission of the publishers, from “Poems ,’* 
by Sophie Jewett; copyright, by Thomas Y. Crowell and 
Company. 


277 


September 6 

JANE ADDAMS 

R EMEMBER Botticelli’s Fortitude 

In the Uffizi?—The worn, waiting face; 

The pale fine-fibred hands upon the mace; 

The brow’s serenity, the lips that brood. 

The vigilant, tired patience of her mood? 

There was a certain likeness I could trace 
The day I heard her in a country place, 

Talking to knitting women about food. 

Through cool statistics glowed the steady gleam 
Of that still undismayed, interned desire; 

But—strength and stay and deeper than the dream— 
The two commands that she is pledged to keep 
In the red welter of a world on fire, 

Are, “What is that to thee?” and “Feed my sheep! ” 

Ruth Comfort Mitchell. 


Jane Addams. 


278 


September 7 

^THIE portals are open, the white road leads 
^ Through thicket and garden, o’er stone and sod. 

On, up! Boot and Saddle! Give spurs to your steeds! 
There’s a city beleaguered that cries for men’s deeds, 
For the faith that is strength and the love that is God! 
On through the dawning! Humanity calls! 

Life’s not a dream in the clover! 

On to the walls, on to the walls, 

On to the walls and over! 

Hermann Hagedorn. 


279 


September 8 

THE OFFER OF THE COLLEGE 


T O be at home in all lands and all ages; to count Nature 
a familiar acquaintance, and Art an intimate friend; to 
gain a standard for the appreciation of other men’s work 
and the criticism of your own; to carry the keys of the 
world’s library in your pocket, and feel its resources be¬ 
hind you in whatever task you undertake; to make hosts of 
friends among the men of your own age who are to be 
leaders in all walks of life; to lose yourself in generous 
enthusiasms and cooperate with others for common ends; 
to learn manners from students who are gentlemen, and 
form character under professors who are Christians, this 
is the offer of the college for the best four years of your 
life. 

William DeWitt Hyde. 


280 


September 9 

JOTTINGS FROM LORD CHESTERFIELD’S LETTERS 
TO HIS SON 


TOE wiser than other people, if you can; but do not tell 
^ them so. 

Vice and ignorance are the only thing I know which 
one ought to be ashamed of; keep but clear of them and 
you may go anywhere without fear or concern. 

Pleasure is the rock which most young people split 
upon. They launch out with crowded sails in quest of 
it, but without a compass to direct their course, or reason 
sufficient to steer the vessel; for want of which, pain and 
shame, instead of pleasure, are the returns of their voy¬ 
age. 

Every man’s reason is, and must be, his guide. 

Real friendship is a slow grower. 

Wear your learning like your watch, in a private pocket, 
and do not pull it out and strike it merely to show that 
you have one. 

Remember, then, as long as you live, that nothing but 
strict truth can carry you through the world with either 
your conscience or your honour unwounded. 

Lord Chesterfield, 1694-1773. 


281 


September 10 

IT is important to know people, but it is more impor- 
-*■ tant to be worth knowing. College offers you at least 
two valuable details of opportunity; a large variety of 
people to know, and a large variety of means to make 
yourself better worth knowing. 

E. S. Martin. 



282 


September 11 

E VERY creature that came near to him began to love 
him; one could so thoroughly trust him;—he rang so 
thoroughly true; one felt instinctively there was not the 
slightest bit of affectation about the man,—inside and 
outside moved together. 


Said of Charles Kingsley. 


September 12 

T WO men I honour, and no third. First, the toil-worn 
Craftsman that with earth-made Implement, laboriously 
conquers the Earth, and makes her man's. Venerable to 
me is the hard Hand; crooked, coarse; wherein notwith¬ 
standing lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of 
the Sceptre of this planet. Venerable too is the rugged 
face, all weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence; 
for it is the face of a Man living man-like. O, but the 
more venerable for thy rudeness, and even because we must 
pity as well as love thee! Hardly-entreated Brother! For 
us was thy back so bent, for us were thy straight limbs 
and fingers so deformed: thou wert our Conscript on whom 
the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so marred. For in 
thee too lay a God-created Form, but it was not to be un¬ 
folded; encrusted must it stand with the thick adhesions 
and defacements of Labour; and thy body, like thy soul, was 
not to know freedom. Yet toil on, toil on: thou art in thy 
duty, be out of it who may; thou toilest for the altogether 
indispensable, for daily bread. 

Thomas Carlyle. 


284 


September 13 

D REAMS, books, are each a world; and books, we know 
Are a substantial world, both pure and good; 

Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, 

Our pastime and our happiness will grow. 

William Wordsworth. 


285 


September 14 


rpHERE is a great power in words. All the things that 
-*■ ever get done in the world, good or bad, are done by 
words. 


Charles Bann Kennedy. 


t 


286 


September 15 

G OD wove a web of loveliness, 

Of clouds and stars and birds 
But made not anything at all 
So beautiful as words. 

They shine around our simple earth 
With golden shadowings— 

And every common thing they touch 
Is exquisite with wings. 

Anna Hempstead Branch . 


287 


September 16 

W HEN we finish building an air castle we seldom live in 
it after all; we sometimes even forget that we ever 
longed to! Perhaps we have gone so far as to begin 
another castle on a higher hilltop. 

Kate Douglas Wiggin. 


288 


September 17 

A PRAYER 


E ask for no far-off vision which shall set us dream- 



» ▼ ing while opportunities around slip by; for no en¬ 
chantment which shall make our hands to slack and our 
spirits to sleep, but for the vision of Thyself in common 
things for every day; that we may find a Divine calling 
in the claims of life, and see a heavenly reward in work 
well done. 

We ask Thee not to lift us out of life, but to prove thy 
power within it; not for tasks more suited to our strength, 
but for strength more suited to our tasks. 

Give to us the vision that moves, the strength that en¬ 
dures, the grace of Jesus Christ, who wore our flesh like a 
monarch’s robe and walked our earthly life like a con¬ 
queror in triumph. Amen. 


W. E. Orchard. 


Taken by permission from “The Temple, A Book of Pray¬ 
ers,” by W. E. Orchard; copyrighted by E. P. Dutton 
and Company, New York. 


289 


September 18 


H OW can we expect a harvest of thought who have not 
had a seed-time of character? 

Henry David Thoreau. 


% 


290 


September 19 


B E like the bird, who, pausing in her flight 
Awhile, on boughs too slight, 

Feels them give beneath her and yet sings, 
Knowing she too has wings. 


Robert Browning. 


September 20 

O NE wanted so much to be glorious! 

An organ great and sweet j 
He could be but humbly cheerful, 

An organ of the street! 

It trundled on hammering bravely 
Airs not at all sublime: 

Where’er it chanced, the children danced, 

The grown folk stepped in time. 

Gertrude Hall. 







292 


September 21 

hath mightily won 

God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain, 
And sight out of blindness, and purity out of a stain. 

Sidney Lanier. 


293 


September 22 

J N labor, as in prayer, fulfilling the same law. 

John Greenleaf Whittier. 


294 


September 23 

THE STABS OF AUTUMN 


“Domine, cui sunt Pleiades curae.” 


'T'HIS is the night of the Autumnal Equinox. 

A The garland of the Milky Way has now been thrown 
across the whole sky from northeast to southwest. 

Vega and Altair hang halfway down the curtain of the 
west. 

Cassiopeia like a huge “W” makes a diagonal across the 
north. 

Now low down in the south shines “the lonely star” of 
Fomalhaut, the Fish’s Mouth. This like Castor and 
Pollux is one of the sailors’ - stars, a friend from the 
bridge of the ship in lonely seas. 

West of Cassiopeia Perseus flashes his sword among the 
stars of the Milky Way. 

High in the sky overhead rides the Winged Horse, 
Pegasus. 


Adapted, by permission of the publishers, from “A Year 
with the Stars,” by Garrett Serviss. Copyright, 1910, 
by Harper and Brothers. 


295 


September 24 

W HO is a leader? Is it not one who knows the way, 
keeps ahead, and has that strange power which en¬ 
ables him to get others to follow? 

John R. Mott. 


296 


September 25 

THE BROOM, THE SHOVEL, THE POKER, AND THE 
TONGS 

HP HE Broom and the Shovel, the Poker and Tongs, 

* They all took a drive in the Park. 

And each sang a song, Ding-a-dong! Ding-a-dong! 

Before they went back in the dark. 

Mr. Poker he sat quite upright in the coach, 

Mr. Tongs made a clatter and clash, 

Miss Shovel was dressed all in black (with a brooch), 

Mrs. Broom was in blue (with a sash). 

Ding-a-dong! Ding-a-dong! 

And they all sang a song! 

‘ ‘ O Shovely so lovely! ’ ’ the Poker he sang, 

“You have perfectly conquered my heart! 

Ding-a-dong! Ding-a-dong! If you’re pleased with my 
song, 

I will feed you with cold apple-tart! 

When you scrape up the coals with a delicate sound, 

You enrapture my life with delight! 

Your nose is so shiny! Your head is so round 
And your shape is so slender and bright! 

Ding-a-dong! Ding-a-dong! 

Ain’t you pleased with my song?” . . . 

Edward Lear. 


297 



September 26 

JUST THE REVERSE 

Y OU go to bed at twelve or one. 

And thus destroy your health, my son.” 

“No, sir,” the boy said drowsily, 

“It’s getting up that’s killing me.” 

John Bannister Tabb. 


298 


September 27 


T last Tom stumbled over a respectable old stick lying 



half covered with earth. But a very stout and worthy 
stick it was, for it belonged to good Eoger Ascham in 
olden times, and had carved on its head King Edward the 
Sixth, with the Bible in his hand. 

“You see,” said the Stick, “there were as pretty little 
children once as you could wish to see, and might have been 
so still if they had only been left to grow up like human 
beings and then handed over to me; but their foolish 
fathers and mothers instead of letting them pick flowers 
and make dirt-pies and get birds’ nests, and dance around 
the gooseberry bush, as- little children should, kept them al 
ways at lessons, working, working, working, learning work¬ 
day lessons all work days, and Sunday lessons all Sunday, 
and weekly exams every Saturday, and monthly exams every 
month, and yearly exams every year, everything seven times 
over, as if once was not good enough, and good as a feast— 
till their brains grew big and their bodies grew small, and 
they were all changed into turnips, with little but water 
inside, and still their parents actually pick the leaves off 
them as fast as they grow, lest they should have anything 
green about them.” 


Charles Kingsley. 


299 


September 28 

REBECCA’S PHILOSOPHY 


T LOOK like a drudge,” said Rebecca mysteriously, 1 ‘but 
-*■ I really am a princess; you mustn’t tell, but this is only 
a disguise; I wear it for reasons of state.” 

“Aunt Miranda says you must think only of two things: 
will your dress keep you warm and will it wear well, and 
there is nobody in the world to know how I love pink 
and red and how I hate drab and green and how I never 
wear my hat with the black and yellow porcupine quills 
without wishing it would blow off into the river.” 

‘ 1 There’s something inside of you that does instead of 
pretty dresses,” cried Emma Jane. 

Kate Douglas Wiggin. 


Kate Douglas Wiggin. 


September 29 

MOLEY AND RATTY DINE WITH MR. BADGER 


T)RESENTLY they all sat down to luncheon together. 

The Mole found himself placed next to Mr. Badger, 
and as the other two were still deep in river-gossip from 
which nothing could divert them, he took the opportunity to 
tell Mr. Badger how comfortable and homelike it all felt 
to him. “Once well underground,’’ he said, “you know 
exactly where you are. Nothing can happen to you, and 
nothing can get at you. You’re entirely your own mas¬ 
ter, and you don’t have to consult anybody or mind what 
they say. Things go on all the same overhead, and you 
let ’em, and don’t bother about ’em. When you want to, 
up you go, and there the things are, waiting for you.” 

The Badger beamed on him. “That’s exactly what 1 
say, ’ ’ he replied. * 1 There’s no security, or peace, and 
tranquillity, except underground.” 

“No, up and out of doors is good enough t<? roam about 
and get one’s living in; but underground to come back to 
at last—that’s my idea of home. ’ 1 

Kenneth Grahame. 


301 


September 30 


NATURE’S COINCIDENCES 

TS yours a September birthday? 

* It’s odd how busy the world is in other quarters'! 

Woodchucks,—begin their preparations to go to sleep for 
the winter! 

Squirrels and raccoons,—eating the mushrooms as dain¬ 
ties. 

Muskrats,—beginning their winter lodges. 

Deer,—resorting to the edges of the ponds, the bucks 
freeing their horns from the ‘ ‘ velvet . ,} 

Herring-gull,—arriving from the North. 

Blue heron and bittern,—departing south the third week. 

Migratory hawks,—gathering into flocks. 

King-bird and sapsucker,—passing south. 

White-throated sparrow,—arriving from the North. 

Grosbeaks and swallows,—slowly moving south. 

The veery,—going south—and all the warblers. 

Newts,—complete their transformations and leave the 
water. 

Toads,—go into hibernation. 

The rattlesnake and il garters,’ ? —enlarge their fam¬ 
ilies. 

Queen of the wasps and the bumble-bees mature in the 
nests. 

Adults of the monarch butterflies,—move south. 

Second brood of tlfe Red Admiral butterflies,—on your 
dahlias, now and all through October. 

Moths,—spinning cocoons below their food-plants. 

302 


Grasshoppers,—laying their eggs and beginning to die, 
now and through October. 

Nature goes into the “little red school house ,” too. 

Adapted, by permission of the publishers, from “Nature’s 
Calendar,” by Ernest Ingersoll. Copyright, 1910, by 
Harper and Brothers. 


303 

































OCTOBER 


YE Children of Men, bless ye the Lord 
praise him and magnify him forever. 

O let Israel bless the Lord: 

praise him and magnify him forever. 


OCTOBER’S MAGIC 


ILL-TOPS had my feet by heart. ’ 9 


306 


October 1 


T)ECAUSE the road was steep and long 
^ And through a dark and lonely land, 

God set upon my lips a song 
And put a lantern in my hand. 

Through miles on weary miles of night 
That stretch relentless in my way 
My lantern burns serene and white, 

An unexhausted cup of day. 

Joyce Kilmer . 


307 


October 2 

I F the year were an orchestra, to-day would be the flute- 
tone in it. Do you like—as I do—on such a day to go 
out into the sunlight and stop thinking ,—lie fallow as a 
field? A day, in short,—which takes absolute possession of 
you, and says to you in tones which command obedience, to¬ 
day you must forego expression and all outcome, you must 
remain a fallow field, for the sun and wind to fertilize, nor 
shall any corn or flowers sprout into visible green and red 
until to-morrow. 

Sidney Lanier. 


308 


October 3 

A SONG OF ST. FRANCIS 


fT'HERE was a Knight of Bethlehem, 

Whose wealth was tears and sorrow; 

His men-at-arms were little lambs, 

His trumpeters were sparrows. 

His castle was a wooden cross 
On which He hung so high; 

His helmet was a crown of thorns, 

Whose crest did touch the sky. 

Henry Neville Maugham. 


309 


October 4 


ST. FRANCIS ’ SERMON TO THE BIRDS 

A ND as with great fervour he was going on the way, he 
lifted up his eyes and beheld some trees hard by the 
road whereon sat a great company of birds well-nigh without 
number: whereat St. Francis marvelled, and said to his 
companions: “Ye shall wait for me here upon the way 
and I will go to preach unto my sisters, the birds. ” And 
he went into the field and began to preach unto the birds 
that were on the ground; and immediately those that were 
on the trees flew down to him, and they all of them re¬ 
mained still and quiet together until St. Francis made an 
end of preaching: and not even then did they depart, until 
he had given them his blessing. The Sermon that St. Fran¬ 
cis preached unto them was after this fashion: 

“My little sisters, the birds, much bounden are ye unto 
God, your Creator, and always in every place ought ye to 
praise Him, for that He hath given you liberty to fly about 
everywhere, and hath also given you double and triple rai¬ 
ment. Beyond all this, ye sow not, neither do you reap; 
and God feedeth you, and giveth you the streams and foun¬ 
tains for your drink, the mountains and the valleys for your 
refuge and the high trees whereon to make your nests; and 
because ye know not how to spin or sew, God clotheth 
you, you and your children; wherefore your Creator loveth 
you much, seeing that He hath bestowed on you so many 
benefits; and therefore, my little sisters, beware of the sin 
of ingratitude, and study always to give praises unto 
God.’' 

Whereas St. Francis spake these words to them, those 
birds began all of them to open their beaks, and stretch 

310 


their necks, and spread their wings, and reverently bend 
their heads down to the ground, and by their acts and their 
songs to show that the Holy Father gave them joy exceed¬ 
ing great. And St. Francis rejoiced with them, and was 
glad, and marvelled much at so great a company of birds 
and their most beautiful diversity and their good heed and 
sweet friendliness, for the which course he devoutly praised 
their Cteator in them. 

The Flowers of St. Francis. 


St. Francis of Assisi, 1182-1226. 


October 5 


^HE Divine light shines most clearly, I think, in the faces 
of men and women and children whom I meet every 


day. 


William Scott Palmer. 


312 


October 6 


BEAUTIFUL 

1 HAYE no word to tell you 
The beauty of her face; 

From her, a wedding garment 
Would win a grace. 

And as the glow of moonrise 
Will make the east divine, 

Doth Soul, the radiant dweller, 

Her face outshine. 

Josephine Preston Peabody. 


313 


October 7 


N OW the joys of the road are chiefly these: 

A crimson touch on the hard-wood trees; 

A vagrant’s morning wide and blue, 

In early fall, when the wind walks, too; 

A shadowy highway cool and brown, 

Alluring up and enticing down 

From rippled water to dappled swamp, 

From purple glory to scarlet pomp; 

The outward eye, the quiet will. 

And the striding heart from hill to hill. 

Bliss Carman. 


314 


October 8 


P ICK a blade of grass by the roadside, from the first 
tuft that offers, and you wijl perceive an independent, 
indefatigable, unexpected little intelligence at work. 

Maurice Maeterlinck. 


** 


315 


October 9 


OD of Youth, let this day here 
Enter neither care nor, fear. 

John Fletcher, 1579-1625. 


316 


October 10 

THE SEA OF SUNSET 

HIS is the land the sunset washes, 

-*• These are the banks of the Yellow Sea; 

Where it rose, or whither it rushes, 

These are the western mystery! 

Night after night her purple traffic 
Strews the landing with opal bales; 

Merchantmen poise upon horizons, 

Dip, and vanish with fairy sails. 

Emily Dickinson. 

Reprinted, by permission of the publishers, from (C Poems ,’ 1 
by Emily Dickinson; copyright by Little, Brown and 
Company. 


317 


October 11 



FROM EDITH CAYELL’S PRAYER-BOOK 


T HOU must pass through fire and water before thou 
come to the place of refreshing. 

Occasions of adversity best discover how great virtue or 
strength each one hath. 

Without a combat thou canst not attain unto the crown 
of patience. 

Grant me above all things that can be desired to rest 
in Thee and in Thee to have my heart. Thou art the 
true peace of the h^eart; Thou its only rest; out of Thee 
all things are hard and restless. In this very peace that is 
in Thee, the one chiefest eternal Good, I will sleep and 
rest. Amen. 

Written in her Prayer-book the night before her execu¬ 
tion. 


318 


October 12 

OF EDITH CAVELL 

f | ''HIS I would say, standing as I do in view of God and 
eternity: I realize that patriotism is not enough. I 
must have no hatred or bitterness toward any one. 

Words of hers before execution. 

I want you to know I was neither afraid nor unhappy, 
but quite ready to give my life for England. 

Written in a last letter to a girl friend in 'England. 

Died October 12, 1915. 


/ 


319 


October 13 


C OMRADES, rejoice with me, 

For the joy that is to be, 

When all the earth, far as the blue sky bends, 

Shall be a light-heart company of friends. 

Edwin Markham. 




320 


October 14 

T T is a phenomenon worthy of consideration by all hard- 
*■ ened disbelievers in that which is miraculous upon this 
earth that when a man’s heart really opens to a friend he 
finds there room for two. And when he takes in the 
second, behold the skies lift, and the earth grows wider, 
and he finds there room for two more. 

David Grayson. 


321 


October 15 

T WA hearts thegether, 

Tho’ skies be strange abuve, 

Can mak’ their ain gude weather, 

A’ out o’ tender luve. 

Katharine Lee Bates. 

Taken by permission from ‘ 1 Fairy Gold, ’ ’ by Katharine Lee 
Bates; copyrighted by E. P. Dutton and Company, 
New York. 


322 


October 16 

THE LANTERNS OE ST. EULALIE 

T N the October afternoon 
*■ Orange and purple and maroon, 

Goes quiet Autumn, lamp in hand, 

About the apple-colored land. 

To light in every apple-tree 
The Lanterns of St. Eulalie. 

They glimmer in the orchard shade 
Like fiery opals set in jade,— 

Crimson and russet and raw gold. 

Yellow and green and scarlet old. 

And O, when I am far away 
By foaming rill and azure bay, 

In dreams once more I shall behold, 

Like signal lights, those globes of gold 

Hung out in every apple-tree, 

The Lanterns of St. Eulalie. 

Bliss Carman 


323 


October 17 


A CHILD’S PRAYER 

F OR Morn, my dome of blue. 

For Meadows, green and gay, 

And Birds who love the twilight of the leaves, 

Let Jesus keep me joyful when I pray. 

For the big Bees that hum 
And hide in bells of flowers; 

For the winding roads that come 
To Evening’s holy door, 

May Jesus bring me grateful to his arms, 

And guard my innocence for evermore. 

Siegfried Sassoon. 

Taken by permission, from “The Old Huntsman and Other 
Poems,” by Siegfried Sassoon; copyrighted by E. P. 
Dutton and Company, New York. 


324 


October 18 

/^1 O on with Life another mile. 

Lighting the way with kindly smile. 

Edwin Markham. 


325 


October 19 

ANTICIPATION (Of a Cat) 

W HEN I grow up I mean to be 
A Lion large and fierce to see. 

I’ll mew so loud that Cook in fright 
Will give me all the cream in sight, 

And anyone who dares to say 
“Poor Puss’ ’ to me will rue the day. 

Then having swallowed him I’ll creep 
Into the Guest-Room Bed to sleep! 

Oliver Her ford. 


326 


October 20 


D R. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES says that in every 
one of us there are two persons. First, there is your¬ 
self and then there is the Other Fellow. Now one of 
these is all the time doing things and the other sits inside 
and tells what he thinks about the performance. . . . 

And I would rather hear the “Well done” of the Other 
Fellow than the shouts of praise of the whole world. 

William Hawley Smith. 


327 


October 21 

T HAVE known many college men who learned their les- 
* sons, who yet failed to get from the college all that 
they ought to get. But I have never known a man who 
failed to get his lessons, whatever else he may have got, to 
receive the full advantage of the course. 

Charles Franklin Thwing. 


328 


October 22 

A PRAYER 

O G0D, when the heart is warmest. 

And the head is clearest, 

Give me to act: 

To turn the purposes thou formest 
Into fact. 

John Jay Chapman. 


329 


October 23 


Jj^REE men set themselves free. 


James Oppenheim. 


330 


October 24 

F you would not be known to do a thing, never do it. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson. 


I 


331 


October 25 

MORE LOOKING-GLASS LOGIC 

L ET ’S consider your age to begin with—how old are 
you?” 

“I’m seven and a half, exactly,” said Alice. 

“You needn’t say ‘exactly,’ ” the Queen remarked. “I 
can believe it without that. Now I’ll give you something 
to believe. I’m just 101, 5 months and a day.” 

“I can’t believe that,” said Alice. 

“Can’t you,” said the Queen in a pitying tone. “Try 
again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes. . . . When 
I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. 
Why, sometimes, I’d believe as many as six impossible 
things before breakfast.” 

Lewis Carroll. 


332 


October 26 


rpHE best reward for having wrought well already, is to 
have more to do. 

Charles Kingsley. 


333 


October 27 

P>REATHE hard, play hard, rest hard, work hard; up 
and at it, no matter what it is. 

Theodore Roosevelt. 


Theodore Roosevelt, 1858-1919. 


"V 


334 


October 28 

PIONEERS 

r|^HEY rise to mastery of wind and snow; 

* They go like soldiers grimly into strife 
To colonize the plain. They plow and sow, 

And fertilize the sod with their own life, 

As did the Indians and the buffalo. 

Hamlin Garland. 


335 


October 29 

T HE coyote’s Winter howl cuts the dusk behind the hill, 
But the ranch’s shinin’ window I kin see, 

And though I don’t deserve it and, I reckon, never will, 
There’ll be room beside the fire kep’ for me. 

Skimp my plate ’cause I’m late. Let me hit the old kid 
gait, 

For to-night I’m stumblin’ tired of the new, 

And I’m ridin’ up the Christmas trail to you, 

Old folks, 

I’m ridin’ up the Christmas trail to you. 

Charles Badger ClarTc, Jr. 


336 


October 30 

Tl/TAY every soul that touches thine. 

Be it the slightest contact, get therefrom some good, 
Some little grace, one kindly thought, 

One aspiration yet unfelt; one bit of courage 
For the darkening sky, one gleam of faith 
To brave the thickening ills of life, 

One glimpse of brighter sky beyond the gathering mists, 
To make this life worth while, and heaven a surer heritage. 

Unknown. 


October 31 

THE HARE 

TN the black furrow of a field 

I saw an old witch-hare this night; 

And she cocked her lissome ear. 

And she eyed the moon so bright, 

And she nibbled o' the green; 

And I whispered ‘ * Whsst! Witch-hare! ’ 1 
Away like ghostie o’er the field 
She fled, and left the moonlight there. 

Walter Eamal. 


All Hallows Eve. 


338 


NOVEMBER 


O YE Servants of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: 
praise him and magnify him forever. 

O ye Spirits and Souls of the Righteous, bless ye the Lord: 
praise him and magnify him forever. 


NOVEMBER’S MAGIC 


jpiOR one candle will light ten thousand. 



November 1 

FOR ALL THE SAINTS 

T710R all the saints, who from their labors rest, 

-*• Who Thee by faith before the world confessed, 

Thy Name, O Jesu, be forever blest. Alleluia. 

Thou wast their Rock, their Fortress, and their Might: 
Thou, Lord, their Captain in the well-fought fight; 

Thou, in the darkness drear, the one true Light. Alleluia. 

Oh, may Thy soldiers, faithful, true, and bold, 

Fight as the saints who nobly fought of old, 

And win, with them, the victor’s crown of gold. Alleluia. 

O blest communion, fellowship divine! 

We feebly struggle, they in glory shine; 

Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine. Alleluia. 

And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long, 

Steals on the ear the distant triumph-song. 

And hearts are brave again, and arms are strong. Alleluia. 

The golden evening brightens in the west; 

Soon, soon to faithful warriors cometh rest; 

Sweet is the calm, of Paradise the blest. Alleluia. 

But lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day; 

The saints triumphant rise in bright array; 

The King of Glory passes on His way. Alleluia. 

From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast, 
Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host, 
Singing to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Alleluia. 

W. W. How. 


Feast of All Saints. 


341 


November 2 


CITIZEN OF THE WORLD 

N O longer of Him be it said 

‘ ‘ He hath no place to lay His head. f * 

In every land a constant lamp 
Flames by His small and mighty camp. 

There is no strange and distant place 
That is not gladdened by His face. 

And every nation kneels to hail 

The Splendour shining through Its veil. 

Cloistered beside the shouting street. 

Silent, He calls me to His feet. 

Imprisoned for His love of me 
He makes my spirit greatly free. 

And through my lips that uttered sin 
The King of Glory enters in. 

Joyce Kilmer. 


All Souls Day. 


November 3 

CANDLES THAT BURN 

C ANDLES that burn for a November birthday, 

Wreathed around with asters and with goldenrod, 

As you go upward in your radiant dying 
Carry my prayer to God. 

• • 

Ask Him to keep her brave and true and lovely, 

Vivid and happy, gay as she is now, 

Ask Him to let no shadow touch her beauty, 

No sorrow mar her brow. 

Aline Kilmer. 


343 


November 4 


THE BURDEN 

T ASK no more save only this may be— - 
* On life’s long road, where many comrades fare, 

One shall not guess, though he keep step with me, 

The burden that I bear. 

Theodosia Garrison. 


344 


November 5 


FROM A FRENCH ARMY HOSPITAL 

T NEVER dreamed what real work was before, of course; 

but now I know, and am learning mighty quick to accom¬ 
modate myself to the revelation,—never to take two steps 
when I can arrive in one, never to bend over the low beds 
if I can sit, to relax everything but the occupied hand when 
I am feeding a patient. These seem little things but just 
because of them I am as fit as possible, though I work 
always more than fourteen hours per day. 

You can’t imagine, I suppose, that we laugh and jest all 
day long? Yet so it is, and if you can’t do that, you 
might as well get out, for all the good you can do a 
French wounded soldier. 

Gaston is of the stuff that will make France victorious. 
He’s a little fish dealer of Paris, staunch and sane of soul 
and limb, the kind that goes out alone on patrol, and 
brings down his Boche every time, and wears the cross at 
nineteen without bragging. 

A pearl fisher—a good Catholic and a brave fighter— 
has come from the sunny shores of Guadeloupe, to die for 
France. ... If ever I doubted how to die, my black pearl 
fisher from Guadeloupe has shown me the way. 

The last two days have been painfully hot at noon, and 
give ominous foretaste of summer in these frail barracks. 
It will be as rigorous as winter, and the wounds already 
need more vigilance. So far, though, it is all right. 

Mademoiselle Miss. 


November 6 

A CREED 


r |''HERE is a destiny that makes us brothers: 

-*• None goes his way alone: 

All that we send into the lives of others 
Comes back into our own. 

Edwin Markham 


346 


November 7 

NO EAST OB WEST 


TN Christ there is no East or West, 

In Him no South or North, 

But one great Fellowship of Love 
Throughout the whole wide earth. 

In Him shall true hearts everywhere 
Their high communion find. 

His service is the golden cord 
Close-binding all mankind. 

John Oxeriham. 


347 


November 8 

^pHE things that make men alike are finer and better than 
the things that keep them apart. 

Canon Barnett . 


348 


November 9 

LI OW is Filippa to live? Will you say, 

You lords of finance, who meagerly pay 
That your profits may crown you the kings of to-day? 
You, whose yachts and whose motors, whose houses and 

lands 

Are bought by the labor of Filippa’s hands, 

Do you Tcnow of a way that the body be fed 
Save by bread? 

In a world where the price of one’s breathing is gold, 

Can you tell of a way one may shelter from cold 
Save by roofs that are rented for dollars and cents? 

Yet you dare to reward with your miserly pence! 

Do you dream she could thrive on the pittance you give? 
Speak! How is Filippa to live? . . . 

Shame, shame on the nation that shelters this wrong 
While praising Jehovah with prayer and with song. 

And shame to the women who shrug and who sigh, 

But offer no help as Filippa goes by. 

Angela Morgan. 


349 


November 10 


T~\ EMOCRACY means not 1 ‘ 1*m as good as you are , 1 * 
but “You’re as good as I am." 

Theodore Parlcer. 


350 


November 11 

PRAYER OF A LONELY GIRL IN THE CITY 

O H, keep me brave through eves alone, 

Still blithe along my toiling day, 

Still let me hold my torch of life 
Up-flaming clear along the way. 

Lord Christ, Who gave my dreams to me, 

Still keep them white, as yesterday, 

Within my little friendly town, 

Within my home, so far away. 

Margaret Widdemer. 


351 


November 12 


piTY as an emotion passes. Pity as a motive, remains. 

Dr. Edward C. Trudeau. 


352 


November 13 

WANTED 

G OD give us men! The time demands 

Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and willing 
hands. 

Men whom the lust of office does not kill; 

Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy; 

Men who possess opinions and a will; 

Men who have honor; men who will not lie; 

Men who can stand before a demagogue 
And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking; 
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog 
In public duty and in private thinking. 

J. G. Holland. 


353 


November 14 

W E are they who will not falter— 

Many swords or few— 

Till we make this earth the altar 
Of a worship new; 

We are they who will not take 
From palace, hut, or code, 

A meaner law than i 1 brotherhood, * 1 
A lower Lord than God. 

Edwin Arnold. 


354 


November 15 


HAT we get in the steerage is not the refuse but the 



* * sinew and bone of all the nations. I am never so 
clear as to the basis of my faith in America as when I have 
been talking with the ungroomed mothers of the East Side 
in New York. Voluntary emigration always calls for the 
highest combination of the physical and moral virtues. 
With every shipload of immigrants we get a fresh infusion 
of pioneer blood. 

Our brains, our wealth, our ambitions flow in channels 
dug by the hands of immigrants. Alien hands erect our 
offices, rivet our bridges, and pile up the proud masonry 
of our monuments. 


Mary Antin. 


355 


November 16 

O H, these foreigners mek me sick, they do reely! ’’ 

“Yes, perhaps that has been the real mistake all 
along. ’ ’ 

“Wot ’as, Captain?” 

“Taking these people—men like this one, for instance— 
for foreigners.” 

“Well, you’ll excuse me, sir, but wot else are they?” 
“I’m not quite sure; but supposing they were more nearly 
related? Supposing, after all, they happened to be made 
of the same flesh and blood as you and me? Supposing, 
even, they were—brothers?” 

Charles Bann Kennedy. 


356 




November 17 



OU shall be governed by laws of your own making and 


live a free and if you will, a sober, and industrious 
People. I shall not usurp the right of any, or oppress 
his person. God has furnished me with a better resolu¬ 
tion, and has given me his grace to keep it. In short, what 
ever sober and free men can reasonably desire for the secur¬ 
ity and improvement of their own happiness, I shall heartily 
comply with—I beseech God to direct you in the way of 
righteousness, and therein prosper you and your children 
after you. I am your true friend, 


William Penn. 


William Penn’s Proclamation to the Quaker Colony of 
Pennsylvania. 


November 18 


N OW I know that strength is something more than the 
trampling of others into the dust that we ourselves 
may have a clear road. It is something much harder and 
much less triumphant than that. It is the standing aside to 
let somebody else pass on. 

E. C. Thurston. 


358 


November 19 

A GREAT King made a feast for Love, 

And golden was the board and gold 
The hundred, wondrous gauds thereof; 

Soft lights like roses fell above 
Rare dishes exquisite and fine; 

In jewelled goblets shone the wine— 

A great King made a feast for Love. 

Yet Love as gladly and full-fed hath fared 
Upon a broken crust that two have shared. 

Theodosia Garrison. 


November 20 


O NCE I thought to find on earth 
Love, perfect and complete. 
Now I know it carries wounds 
In its hands and feet. 


Anna Hempstead Branch. 


360 


November 21 


Ml 

'1 


THE WHOLE YEAR CHRISTMAS 

i 

O H, could we keep the Christmas thrill, 

The goad of gladness and good-will, 

The lift of laughter and the touch 
Of kindled hands that utter much, 

Not once a year, but all the time, 

The melody of hearts in chime, 

The impulse beautiful and kind, 

Of soul to soul and mind to mind 

That swings the world 

And brings the world 

On one great day of all the year 

Close to God’s treasure house of cheer. . . . 

Oh, could we keep the Christmas feast, 

Even when goods and gold are least; 

Here, ’mid our common, daily scenes, 

Could we but live what Christmas means, 

Not one day, but for every day 
The miracle of wholesome play. 

The spirit sweet, gift-giving, young, 

From deepest wells of feeling sprung. . . . 

What a different world this world would be! 

For we should see as children see, 

If only a magic way were found 
To make us children the whole year round! 

Angela Morgan. 


361 


November 22 

T HAT is best blood that hath most iron in ; t 
To edge resolve with, pouring without stint 
For what makes manhood dear. 

James Bussell Lowell. 




362 


November 23 

X7I7HERE in life’s common ways 
* * With cheerful feet we go; 

Where in His steps we tread, 

Who trod the way of woe; 

Where He is in the heart, 

City of God, thou art. 

Not throned above the skies, 

Nor golden-walled afar, 

But where Christ’s two or three 
In His name gathered are, 

Be in the midst of them, 

God ’s own Jerusalem. 

F. T. Palgrave. 


363 


November 24 


L EAD on, O King Eternal, 

The day of march has come; 

Henceforth in fields of conquest 
Thy tents shall be our home; 

Through days of preparation, 

Thy grace has made us strong, 

And now, O King Eternal, 

We lift our battle-song. 

Lead on, O King Eternal, 

Till sin's fierce war shall cease, 

And holiness shall whisper 
The sweet amen of peace; 

For not with swords loud clashing, 

Nor roll of stirring drums, 

But deeds of love and mercy 
The heavenly kingdom comes. 

E. W. Shurtleff. 


364 


November 25 

FROM “LITTLE WOMEN” 

D O you remember how you used to play Pilgrim’s Prog¬ 
ress when you were little things? Nothing delighted 
you more than to have me tie my piece-bags on your backs 
for burdens, give you hats and sticks and rolls of paper, 
and let you travel through the house from the cellar, which 
was the City of Destruction, up, up, to the housetop where 
you had all the lovely things you could collect to make a 
Celestial City. 

“We never are too old for this, my dear, because it is a 
play we are playing all the time in one way or another. 
Our burdens are here, our road is before us, and the long¬ 
ing for goodness and happiness is the guide that leads us 
through many troubles and mistakes to the peace which 
is a true Celestial City.” 

Louisa M. Alcott. 


365 


November 26 

CHRISTIAN BEGINS HIS PILGRIMAGE 

I DREAMED, and behold, I saw a man clothed with rags 
standing in a certain place, with his face from his own 
house, a book in his hand, and a great burden upon his 
back. And his name was Christian. I looked and saw him 
open the book, and read therein; and as he read, he wept 
and trembled; and not being able longer to contain, he 
brake out with a lamentable cry. 

Then said Evangelist, pointing with his finger over a 
very wide field, Do you see yonder Wicket Gate? The man 
said, No. Then said the other, Do you see yonder shining 
light? He said, I think I do. Then said Evangelist, 
Keep that light in your eye, and go up directly thereto, 
so shalt thou see the gate; at which, when thou knockest, 
it shall be told thee what thou shalt do. 

So I saw in my dream that the man began to run. Now 
he had not run far from his own door, but his wife and 
children, perceiving it, began to cry after him to return; 
but the man put his fingers in his ears, and ran on, crying, 
Life! Life! Eternal life! 


366 


November 27 


CHRISTIAN IS LOOSED OF HIS BURDEN 

\TOW I saw in my dream, that they drew nigh to a very 
miry slough, that was in the midst of the plain; and 
they being heedless, did both fall suddenly into the bog. 
The name of the slough was Despond. Here, therefore, they 
wallowed for a time, being grievously bedaubed with dirt; 
and Christian, because of the burden that was on his back, 
began to sink in the mire. But still he endeavoured to 
struggle to that side of the slough that was further from 
his own house, and next to the Wicket-gate. But I beheld 
that a man came to him, whose name was Help. So he 
gave him his hand, and he drew him out, and set him upon 
sound ground, and bid him go his way. 

Now I saw in my dream that the highway up which Chris¬ 
tian was to go, was fenced on either side with a wall, and 
that wall was called Salvation. Up this way did burdened 
Christian run, but not without great difficulty, because of 
the load on his back. He ran thus till he came at a place 
somewhat ascending; and upon that place stood a cross. 
So I saw in my dream, that just as Christian came up with 
the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell 
from off his back. Then was Christian glad and light¬ 
some. - 

Then he stood still awhile to look and wonder. Now 
as he stood looking and we.eping, behold, three Shining Ones 
came to him, and saluted him with, Peace be to thee. 
So the first said to him, Thy sins be forgiven thee; the 
second stripped him of his rags, and clothed him with 
change of raiment; the third also set a mark in his fore- 

367 


head; and gave him a roll with a seal upon it, which he bid 
him look on as he ran, and that he should give it in at the 
Celestial Gate: so they went their way. Then Christian gave 
three leaps for joy, and went on singing. 


868 


November 28 

CHRISTIAN SLEEPS IN THE CHAMBER PEACE 

I BEHELD then that they all went on till they came to 
the foot of the Hill Difficulty, at the bottom of which 
there was a spring. There were also in the same place two 
other ways besides that which came straight from the gate: 
but the narrow way lay right up the hill, and the name of 
the going up the side of the hill is called Difficulty. Chris¬ 
tian went now to the spring, and drank thereof to refresh 
himself. Now the name of one of these two other ways 
was Danger, and the name of the other Destruction. 

I looked then after Christian, to see him going up the 
hill, where I perceived he fell from running to going, and 
from going to clambering upon his hands and knees, be¬ 
cause of the steepness of the place. Now about the midway 
to the top of the hill was a pleasant arbor, made by the 
Lord of the hill for the refreshing of weary travellers. 
Thither Christian got, where also he sat down to rest 
him. 

And he lifted up his eyes and behold there was a very 
stately palace before him, the name of which was Beauti¬ 
ful, and it stood by the high-way. So I saw in my dream 
that he made haste and went forward that if possible he 
might get lodging there. So when he was come in and 
sat down, they gave him something to drink and eat. Then 
the pilgrim they laid in a large upper chamber, whose win¬ 
dows opened towards the sun-rising. The name of the 
chamber was Peace. 


369 


November 29 

THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS 

rpHEN went they till they came to the Delectable Moun- 
* tains, which mountains belong to the Lord of that hill. 
Now there were on the tops of these mountains shepherds 
feeding their flocks, and they stood by the highwayside. 
The pilgrims, therefore, went to them and leaning upon 
their staves, they asked, Whose delectable mountains are 
these, and whose be the sheep that feed upon them? 

Shepherds. These mountains are Immanuel’s land, and 
they are within sight of his city, and the sheep also are his, 
and He laid down his life for them. 

Christian. Is this the way to the Celestial City? 

Shepherds. You are just in your way. 

Christian. How long is it thither? 

Shepherds. Too far for any but those that shall get 
thither indeed. 

Then said the Shepherds one to another, Let us here 
show to the pilgrims the gates of the Celestial City, if they 
have skill to look through our prospective-glass. The pil¬ 
grims then lovingly accepted the motion; so they had them 
to the top of a high hill, called Clear, and gave them the 
glass to look. 

Then they essayed to look, but the remembrance of evil 
things made their hands shake, by means of which impedi¬ 
ment they could not look steadily through the glass, yet 
thought they saw something like the gate, and also some of 
the glory of the place. 


370 


November 30 


THE CELESTIAL CITY 

VTOW I saw in my dream, that by this time the pilgrims 

^ were got over the Enchanted Ground, and had en¬ 
tered into the country of Beulah, whose air was very sweet 
and pleasant. Here they heard continually the singing of 
birds and saw every day the flowers appear in the earth, 
and heard the voice of the turtle in the land. Here also 
they were in sight of the city they were going to: also there 
met them some of the inhabitants thereof; for in this land 
the Shining Ones commonly walked, because it was upon the 
borders of heaven. 

And drawing near to the City they had yet a more per¬ 
fect view thereof. It was builded of pearls and precious 
stones, also the street thereof was paved with gold. But the 
reflection of the sun upon the city was so extremely glori¬ 
ous, that they could not as yet with open face behold it. 
Now I saw further, that betwixt them and the gate was a 
river; but there was no bridge to go over; and the river 
was very deep. Then they addressed themselves to the 
waters, and entering, Christian began to sing, and, crying 
out to his good friend Hopeful, he said, I sink in deep 
waters; the billows go over my head. And with that a great 
darkness and horror fell upon Christian, so that he could not 
see before him. 

Now upon the bank of the river, on the other side, they 
saw the two shining men, who there waited for them. Now 
you must note that the City stood upon a mighty hill; but 
the pilgrims went up that hill with ease; also they had left 
their mortal garments in the river. 

Now while they were thus drawing towards the gate, 

37jL 


behold a company of the heavenly host came out to meet 
them: to whom it was said by the other shining ones, These 
are the men that have loved our Lord, and that have left 
all for his holy Name. 

Then I saw in my dream that these two men went in 
at the gate; and lo! as they entered, they were trans¬ 
figured; and they had raiment put on that shone like gold. 
Then I heard in my dream that all the bells of the City 
rang again for joy. There were also of them that had 
wings and they answered one another without intermis¬ 
sion, saying, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord! And after that 
they shut up the gates; which when I had seen, I wished 
myself among them. 

Adapted from John Bunyan. 


372 


DECEMBER 


O YE holy and humble Men of heart, bless ye the Lord 
praise him and magnify him forever. 


373 


DECEMBEE’S MAGIC 


nnHE rising of the wind among the pines, 
The runic wind, full of old legendries . 1 

374 




December 1 

/^IIVE me the winter: give me the winter! Not all win- 
ter, but just winter enough, just what nature sends. 

David Grayson. 



December 2 


THE GOOD SOLDIER IN DISTANT AFRICA 


J MUST go. I am in honour bound to go. 

Mine has been such a joyous service. God has been good 
to me, letting me serve Him in this humble way. I cannot 
thank Him enough for the honour He conferred upon me 
when He sent me to the Dark Continent. 


Don’t be a nervous old maid! Give yourself for the bat¬ 
tle outside somewhere and keep your heart young. Give up 
your whole being to create music everywhere, in the light 
places and in the dark places, and your life will make 
melody. 


It is a dark and difficult land, and I am old and weak— 
but happy. 


Mary Slessor. 


Mary Slessor of Calabar, 1848-1915. 


376 


December 3 

’'HE Soul that hath a Guest, 

Doth seldom go abroad. 

Diviner crowd at home 
Obliterate the need. 

And courtesy forbid 
A host’s departure, when 
Upon himself be visiting 
The Emperor of Man. 

Emily Dickinson. 

Reprinted, by permission of the publishers, from “The 
Single Hound,” by Emily Dickinson; copyright by 
Little, Brown and Company. 


377 


December 4 

F OLK say, a wizard to a northern king 

At Christmas-tide such wondrous things did show, 
That through one window men beheld the spring, 

And through another saw the summer glow, 

And through a third the fruited vines a-row, 

While still, unheard, but in its wonted way, 

Piped the drear wind of that December day. 

William Morris. 


378 


December 5 

THE CHRISTMAS MIRACLE 

D O you know the marvel of Christmas time, 

The miracle meaning of song and chime, 

Of hearty love and huge good will. 

Of feasts that gladden and gifts that spill? . . . 

Oh! it isn’t the gift, .and it isn ’t the feast; 

Of all the miracles, these are the least. 

It’s the good that flows from the hearts of men 
When Christmas love is abroad again. 

Angela Morgan. 


379 


December 6 


THE INN OF LIFE 


C HRIST passes 

On his ceaseless quest, 
Nor will he rest 
With any, 

Save as Chiefest Guest. 


John Oxeriham. 


380 


December 7 

Y ET if his Majesty, our sovereign lord. 

Should of his own accord 
Friendly himself invite, 

And say, ‘‘I’ll be your guest to-morrow night,” 

How should we stir ourselves, call and command 
All hands to work! “Let no man idle stand. 

Set me fine Spanish tables in the hall, 

See they be fitted all; 

Let there be room to eat, 

And order taken that there want no meat, 

See e^ery sconce and candlestick made bright 
That without tapers they may give a light. ...” 

Thus if the king were coming would we do, 

And ’twere good reason too. . . . 

But at the coming of the King of Heaven 
All’s set at six and seven; 

We wallow in our sin, 

Christ cannot find a chamber in the inn, 

We entertain Him always as a stranger, 

And as at first still lodge Him in the manger. 

Unknown 


381 


December 8 


WHEN THE HERDS WERE WATCHING 


W HEN the herds were watching 
In the midnight chill. 

Came a spotless lambkin 
From the heavenly hill. 

Snow was on the mountains, 

And the wind was cold. 

When from God’s own garden 
Dropped a rose of gold. 

When ’twas bitter winter, 

Homeless and forlorn, 

In a star-lit stable 
Christ the Babe was born. 

Welcome, heavenly lambkin; 

Welcome, golden rose; 

Alleluia, Baby, 

In the swaddling clothes! 

William Canton. 


382 


December 9 


THE LEAST OF CAEOLS 

L OVELIEST dawn of gold and rose 
Steals across undrifted snows; 

In brown, rustling oak leaves stir 
Squirrel, nuthatch, woodpecker; 

Brief their matins, but, by noon, 

All the sunny wood's a-tune: 

Jays, forgetting their harsh cries. 

Pipe a spring note clear and true; 

Wheel on angel wings of blue. 

Trumpeters of Paradise; 

Then the tiniest feathered thing, 

All a-flutter, tail and wing, 

Gives himself to carroling; 

* 1 Chick-a-dee-dee, chick-a-dee!' * 

Jesulino, hail to thee! 

Lowliest baby born to-day, 

Pillowed on a wisp of hay: 

King no less of sky and earth, 

And singing sea; 

Jesu! Jesu! most and least! 

For the sweetness of thy birth 
Every little bird and beast. 

Wind and wave and forest tree, 

Praises God exceedingly, 

Exceedingly. Sophie Jewett. 

Eeprinted by permission of the publishers from “Poems," 
by Sophie Jewett; copyright by Thomas Y. Crowell 
and Company. 


383 


December 10 

LIKE ONE I KNOW 

L ITTLE Christ was good, and lay 
Sleeping, smiling in the hay; 

Never made the cows’ round eyes 
Open wider at his cries; 

Never when the night was dim, 

Startled guardian seraphim, 

Who above Him in the beams, 

Kept their watch round his white dreams; 

Let the rustling brown mice creep 
Undisturbed about his sleep. 

Yet if it had not been so— 

Had He been like one I know, 

1 Fought with little fumbling hands, 

Kicked inside his swaddling bands. 

Puckered wilful crimsoning face— 

Mary Mother, full of grace, 

At the little naughty thing, 

Still had been a-worshipping. 

Nancy Campbell. 


3S4 


December 11 


A LITTLE Child, a Joy-of-Heart, with eyes 
Unsearchable, he grew in Nazareth, 

His daily speech so innocently wise 

That all the town went telling: “ Jesus saith .” 

Katharine Lee Bates . 


Reprinted by permission of the publishers, from “America 
the Beautiful and Other Poems, ’’ by Katharine Lee 
Bates. Copyright by Thomas Y. Crowell Company. 


: J S5 


December 12 


CHRISTMAS ONCE IS CHRISTMAS STILL 
ND Christmas onee is Christmas still: 



The gates through which He came, 
And forests wild and murmuring rill, 

And fruitful field and breezy hill— 

And all that else the wide world fill, 

Are vocal with the name. 


Phillips Brooks. 


386 


December 13 

VT O true man can live a half life, when he has genuinely 
learned that it is a half-life. The other half, the higher 
half, must haunt him. 

Phillips Broolcs. 


Phillips Brooks, 1835-1893. 


December 14 

THE FOLDED FLOCK 

I SAW the shepherd fold the sheep, 

With all the little lambs that leap. 

O Shepherd Lord, so I would be 
Folded with all my family. 

Or go they early, come they late, 

Their mother and I must count them eight. 

And how, for us, were any heaven, 

If we, sore-stricken, saw but seven? 

Kind Shepherd, as of old Thou’It run 
And fold at need a straggling one. 

Wilfrid Meynell. 




388 


December 15 

1 HAYE a golden ball, 

A big, bright, shining one, 

Pure gold—and it is all 
Mine.—It is the sun. 

I have a silver ball, 

A white and glistering stone 
That other people call 
The moon—my very own! 

And everything that’s mine 
Is yours, and yours, and yours— 

The shimmer and the shine! — 

Let’s lock our wealth outdoors! 

Florence Converse. 


389 


December 16 

L OVE alters everything; it melts up the whole world 
and makes it afresh. Love is the sun of our spirits, 
and it’s the wind. Ah! and the rain, too! 

John Galsworthy. 



390 


December 17 

G RANT that we may know how to abound and how to 
sacrifice; that life may be to us not a cup to be 
drained but a measure to be filled; that we may be broad 
without losing earnestness, and intense without becoming 
narrow; that every enlargement of our interest may make us 
mean not less but more to those who have the first claim on 
our loyalty; that with widening responsibilities conscience 
may be as sensitive to small sins; that faith may become 
stronger as our knowledge expands and our thought of Thee 
be enlarged with increasing experience; that we may rever¬ 
ently appreciate the heritage bequeathed us by the inquiring 
and devoted of all the ages, while with open minds we con¬ 
fidently expect to-day’s revelation of Thee. 

Henry Sloane Coffin. 


391 


December 18 

L EADERS whose wisdom the multitudes wait for, on 
whose strength they depend, at whose call they rise 
above themselves and lift the whole of God’s big purpose 
for mankind a notch nearer the summit! 

Charles H. Brent. 


392 


December 19 

CHRIST, THE MENDICANT 

A STRANGER, to His own 
He came; and one alone, 

Who knew not sin. 

His lowliness believed, 

And in her soul conceived 
To let Him in. 

He naked was, and she 
Of her humanity 
A garment wove: 

He hungered, and she gave, 

What most His heart did crave, 

A Mother’s love. ♦ 

John Bannister Tdbb. 



393 


December 20 


THE CHERRY TREE CAROL 

A S Joseph was a-walking, 

He heard an angel sing, 

“This night shall be the birth-time 
Of Christ, our heavenly King. 

He neither shall be born 
In housen, nor in hall, 

Nor in the place of Paradise, 

But in an ox’s stall. 

He neither shall be clothed 
In purple nor in pall, 

But in the fair white linen 
That usen babies all. 

He neither shall be rocked 
In silver nor in gold. 

But in a wooden manger 
That resteth on the mould.” 

As Joseph was a-walking, 

There did an angel sing, ' f 
And Mary’s Child at midnight 
Was born to be our King. 

Then be ye glad, good people, 

This night of all the year— 

And light ye up your candles, 

For His star it shineth clear. 

Old English. 


394 



December 21 


B EFORE be slept that night he looked out upon the vast 
and solemn congregation of the stars. Star beyond 
star, planet beyond planet, strange worlds all, immutably 
controlled, unrelinquished day or night, ages or aeons, 
shepherded among the infinite deeps, moving orderly from 
a dawn a million years away, sheep shepherded beyond all 
change or chance, or no more than the dust of a great 
wind blowing behind the travelling feet of Eternity—what 
did it all mean? 

Fiona Maeleod (William Sharp). 


395 


December 22 


WINTER COMES AMONG THE STARS 

A ND behold the height of the stars, how high they 
are!” 

This is called the Winter Equinox. 

With twilight over at six o’clock, Sirius becomes the 
“star of wonder,” heralding and becoming the anniversary 
star of Christmases long ago. It is one of the nearest 
stars but, as well, it is the largest sun in our part of 
space; a younger sun than ours and thirty times as bright! 
Some astronomers think that our whole planetary system is 
but a minor part of a tremendous system of which Sirius 
is the sun; it takes nine years for its light to come to us! 

Now is Orion, the Hunter, in place above Sirius, always 
represented as a giant facing west, brandishing a club and 
carrying on his arm a lion’s hide. The three bright stars 
form his belt, and point toward Sirius. The centre star 
is considered to be the grandest nebula in the sky. 

Nearer the zenith is Aldebaran—the star that shows rose- 
red, and seems to lead many little flocks of stars of won¬ 
drous beauty. 

Now the Pleiades “like a swarm of butterflies”—their 
distance so great that it is not to be computed—fly from 
the Great Hunter ever across the sky, this cluster probably 
one of the most beautiful. To the old Greeks they were 
nymphs forever chased, forever escaping. To the Indians 
they were a group of lost children; in old China they were 
sisters busy at their needlework. 

Above the club of the Hunter you will find Castor and 
396 


Pollux, the Twin Brothers,—stars distinct and fraternal. 

On such a wondrous night were you born? 

Adapted by permission of the publishers from “A Year 
with the Stars, ” by Garrett Serviss. Copyright, 1910, 
by Harper and Brothers. 


397 


December 23 


f'pHOSE shepherds through the lonely night 
* Sat watching by their sheep, 

Until they saw the heavenly host 
Who neither tire nor sleep, 

All singing “ Glory, glory,’ ’ 

In festival they keep. 


Christina Bossetti. 


December 24 


O NEVER, failing splendor! 

O never silent song! 

Still keep the green earth tender, 

Still keep the gray earth strong; 

Still keep the brave earth dreaming 
Of deeds that shall be done, 

While children’s lives come streaming 
Like sunbeams from the sun. 

No star unfolds its glory, 

No trumpet’s wind is blown, 

But tells the Christmas story 
In music of its own. 

No eager strife of mortals, 

In busy fields or town, 

But sees the open portals 

Through which the Christ came down. 

O Angels sweet and splendid, 

Throng in our hearts and sing 
The wonder that attended 
The coming of the King; 

Till, we too, boldly pressing 
Where once the Angel trod, 

Climb Bethlehem’s Hill of Blessing 
And find the Son of God. 

Phillips Broolcs. 


Christmas Eve. 


399 


December 25 


J T is His birthday,—His, the Holy Child! ’ ’ 


ADESTE FIDELES 


O COME, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant; 

O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem! 

Come and behold Him, born the King of angels. 

0 come, let us adore Him, 

0 come, let us adore Kim, 

0 come, let us adore Kim, Christ the Lord! 

See how the shepherds, summoned to His cradle, 
Leaving their flocks, draw nigh with lowly fear; 

We too will thither, bend our joyful footsteps: 

0 come, let us aaore Kim, Christ the Lord! 

Child, for us sinners, poor and in the manger, 

Fain we embrace thee, with awe and love; 

Who would not love thee, loving us so dearly? 

0 come, let us adore Kim, Christ the Lord! 

Sing, choirs of angels, sing in exultation, 

Sing, all ye citizens of heaven above; 

Glory to God in the Highest: 

0 come, let us adore Kim, Christ the Lord! 

Yea, Lord, we greet Thee, born this happy morning, 
Jesu, forever be thy Name adored; 

Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing: 

0 come, let us adore Kim, 

0 come, let us adore Kim, 

0 come, let us adore Kim, Christ the Lord! 

Latin Kymn 18 th century. 
400 


December 26 

XTOW have the homely things been made 
Sacred, and a glory on them laid. 

-For He whose shelter was a stall, 

The King, was born among them all. 

He came to handle saw and plane, 

To use and hallow the profane! 

Now is the holy not afar 
In temples lighted by a star, 

But where the loves and labors are. 

Now that the King has gone this way, 

Great are the things of everyday! 

Edwin Markham. 


401 


December 27 
ON LOVE 

OYE is a great thing, yea a great good; alone it. 
makes every burden light: and bears evenly all that is 
uneven. For it earries a burden which is no burden: and 
makes all bitterness sweet and palatable. 

Love longs to soar and will not be held down by things 
that are low. Love longs to be free, and estranged from 
all worldly affection: that its inner eye may not be dimmed; 
that it may not be caught by any temporal prosperity: or by 
any adversity cast down. 

Nothing is sweeter than Love; nothing braver, nothing 
higher, nothing wider, nothing sweeter, nothing fuller nor 
better in Heaven and in earth; because Love is born of 
God: and can only rest in God above all things. 

Love often knows no measure: but is fervent beyond 
all measure. Love feels no burden: counts no pains, exerts 
itself beyond its strength; talks not of impossibility: for 
it thinks all things possible and all permitted. It is, there¬ 
fore, strong enough for all things; and it fulfils many 
things and warrants them to take effect: where he who 
loves not faints not and lies down. 

Love is watchful and sleeping slumbers not; though weary 
it is not tired, though hampered is not hampered, though 
alarmed is not afrighted, but as a lively flame and burn¬ 
ing torch it forces its way upwards and serenely passes 
through. 

If any man love: he knows what is the cry of this voice. 

Thomas d Kempis. 






402 


December 28 

]\/f EN are looking eye to eye and saying: “We are 
1 1 brothers and have a common purpose.’’ We did not 
realize it before, but now we do realize it and this is our 
covenant of friendship. 

Woodrow Wilson. 


403 


December 29 
UP HILL 

D OES the road wind up-hill all the way? 

Yes, to the very end. . * 

Will the day’s journey take the whole long day? 

From morn to night, my friend. 

But is there for the night a resting place? 

A roof for when the slow dark hours begin. 

May not the darkness hide it from my face? 

You cannot miss that inn. 

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night? 

Those who have gone before. 

Then must I knock, or call when just in sight? 

They will not keep you standing at that door. 

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak? 

Of labor you shall find the sum. 

Will there be beds for me and all who seek? 

Yes, beds for all who come. / 

Christina Eossetti. 


404 


December 30 
ETERNITY 

/^VN this wondrous sea, 

Sailing silently. 

Ho! pilot, ho! 

Knowest thou the shore 
Where no breakers roar. 

Where the storm is o’er? 

In the silent west 
Many sails at rest, 

Their anchors fast; 

Thither, I pilot thee,— 

Land, ho! Eternity! 

Ashore at last! 

Emily Dickinson. 

Reprinted by permission of the Publishers from ‘ 4 Poems,” 
by Emily Dickinson; copyright by Little, Brown and 
Company. 


405 


December 31 


AN OLD SCOTTISH PRAYER 


TV/TAY the Holy One claim thee 

And protect thee on sea and on land, 
And lead thee on from step to step. 

To the peace of the Everlasting City, 

The peace of the Everlasting City. 


406 









































































AN ALMANAC 


O UB Elder Brother is a Spirit of joy: therefore in thi3 
new year, Eejoice! 

In January the Spirit dreams, 

And in February weaves a Eainbow, 

And in March smiles through Kain, 

And in April is clad in White and Green, 

And in May is the Youth of the World, 

And in June is a Glory, 

And in July is in two Worlds, 

And in August is a Colour, 

And in September dreams of Beauty, 

And in October Sighs, 

And in November Wearieth, 

And in December Sleeps. 

“I am Beauty itself and Beautiful Things.” 

(Bhagavad Gita.) 

Fiona Macleod (William Sharp). 


408 


SOME COMMENTS 


“The book of life has wide margins: lend me a pencil/’ 

The beautiful old word “canticle’’ is used in the 
liturgy of the church to mean a song of worship or 
praise. The Canticle here used to preface each month is 
a poem known as the “Song of the Three Children,’’ 
found in the Apocrypha. 

Every child is born under some guardian star. Every 
month, therefore, has been given some particular 
“magic,” and you are to look carefully on the fly-leaf 
of your birthday month in order to find what is your 
good-luck penny,—your spiritual heraldry. How could 
November have the same “good-luck” as June! 

In many instances you will find already recorded thd 
birthdays of some of the people you know. 

The following comments are given to make you fur¬ 
ther acquainted with some of the people included in this 
book, and are arranged somewhat to follow the order 
in which the writers appear. 

Katharine Lee Bates (whose birthday is to be cele¬ 
brated by singing her beautiful hymn of America,—“O 
beautiful for spacious skies”) is the poet who opens our 
year. She is professor of English Literature at Wellesley 
College. 

Dugald Stewart Walker’s “Dream Boats” is full of use¬ 
ful facts about the life-history of fairies, about growing 
up and other tortuous processes. This book of the “story¬ 
teller man” is a beautiful gift for those of one’s friends 
who are so youthful that their occipital lobes have not grown 

409 


stiff with important facts,—and for some others! Such 
books make it possible to know such natural and scien¬ 
tific facts as: “Fauns and fairies and fishes do not shed 
their first teeth and so they cannot shed their youth 
and joy.” 

Angela Morgan has contributed many of the stirring 
poems in this book. Be sure to read the rest of the 
poem concerning Filippa (quoted in December) in the 
volume called The Hour Has Struck, and find as well 
her new volume of poems called Hail, Man! 

One of the loveliest biographies to own is the life of 
St. Francis of Assisi called God’s Troubadour, by Sophie 
Jewett, illustrated with pictures of Italy and making 
real the life of the saint whose birthday we celebrate on 
October 24. Miss Jewett was professor of English Lit¬ 
erature at Wellesley College, and two of her poems are 
given early in our year. Another book of St. Francis 
that one would delight to own is Everybody’s St. Fran¬ 
cis, written by Maurice Francis Egan and illustrated by 
M. Boutet de Monvel, the noted French illustrator. Still 
another book full of incidents from the life of this 
beloved saint is The Little Flowers of St. Francis, pub¬ 
lished in the Everyman’s Series. 

“True religion is betting one’s life that there is a 
God.” This is a quotation from the diaries of the British 
soldier, Donald Hankey, who lost his life in the Great 
War. His essays, A Student in Arms, especially the one 
called “The Beloved Captain,” are among the best 
things in war prose. In this same group you will find 
the spirit of the young French soldier, from the col¬ 
lection of diaries and letters made by Maurice Barres 
and reproduced in “The Atlantic Classics.” The volume 

410 


from which these quotations are taken is called The 
Spirit of Youth. 

In two volumes called The Fiery Cross and Bees 
in Amber, written by John Oxenham, you will find sev¬ 
eral poems in the old Crusader spirit. Several selections 
also from Louise Imogen Guiney reflect the same fighting 
spirit. The poem of William Vaughn Moody “Of wounds 
and sore defeat ’’ gives the same theme still greater 
expression. The latter is taken from his play called 
“The Fire Bringer.” Hunt for the exquisite poem he 
wrote about his mother called “The Daguerreotype” and 
to be found in his poems. 

It is interesting to note that there are some who 
started life as spinners and workmen as well as poets, 
and some who gave their lives to notably great causes. 
Lucy Larcom was a spinner in early New England. 
David Livingstone made a great leap from the factories 
of Scotland to a life of tremendous service in the heart 
of the long grass of Africa. Mary Slessor of Calabar, 
an English woman, though of gentle blood gave her 
life also in the depths of Africa, and her life is one of 
great stimulus,—Mary Slessor of Calabar, edited by 
William P. Livingstone. When you come to Jean Mac¬ 
kenzie’s poems, do not forget that she is an American 
girl, a graduate of Bryn Mawr, who has made the same 
heroic contribution, and whose books on her experience 
in Africa are as fascinating as any you will find: Black 
Sheep, and African Adventures, and An African Trail. 

The letters of Lewis Carroll were written to actual 
children, some of them to the original “Alice.” In his life 
it is entertaining to read how thoroughly he disliked little 

411 


boys and delighted in girls, and that at the same time he 
was writing, he was a lecturer on mathematics in Christ 
Church, Oxford. Mathematics may have delightful play¬ 
fellows ! 

Among the saints of Ireland and Scotland there is no 
one more beloved than Brigit, or St. Bride of the Isles, 
as she is called. Some of the old legends seem to have 
been compiled out of pure love of her, as happens with 
an imaginative people. Even was it said that when the 
Mother of Our Lord was weary, she gave the Babe to 
Brigit to hold, and that one day Jesus came to Ireland 
himself on a journey with his disciples. To conform to 
the old celebration of St. Bride’s Day, you should spread 
out the ashes from the hearth on the eve of her birth¬ 
day, and then look the next morning for the print of her 
feet. The old Irish litany put in in her honor was written 
some two centuries later; the following stanzas show more 
completely its structure as a poem. 

Saints of Bed Autumn! 

Saints of the Year! 

Lo! I am cheery! Michil and Mary 

Open wide Heaven to my soul bereaven! 

Saints of Bed Autumn! 

Saints of the Year! 

Saints of Grey Winter! 

Saints of the Year! 

Outside God’s palace fiends wait in malice 

Let them not win my soul going in! 

Saints of Grey Winter! 

Saints of the Year! 


412 


Saints of Four Seasons! 

Saints of the Year! 

Waking or sleeping, to my grave creeping, 

Life in its Night, hold me God’s light! s 
Saints of Four Seasons! 

Saints of the Year! 

A. D. 704 

Sidney Lanier’s birthday is indicated with a brief 
poem and you must go to his diaries and poems for 
further knowledge of the beloved Southern poet. Read 
for yourself those called, “The Marshes of Glynn” and 
“The Ballad of Trees and the Master.” Find, too, in 
his life the delight of knowing that he was the master 
of the flute as well. Other delightful diaries and books 
of letters to read are the diaries of Sarah Orne Jewett, 
of Emily Dickinson, of Joel Chandler Harris—“Uncle 
Remus,” and the volume of Theodore Roosevelt’s letters 
to his children, the latter every American girl should 
own. 

There are many brief quotations from “David Gray¬ 
son’s’’ essays (his name is Ray Stannard Baker), and 
you should wander over country roads with him. En¬ 
gage him early in the season for a cross-country walk: 
plan to stop at Slab-sides where you will be royally 
welcomed by John Burroughs and treated to salt and 
potatoes! Put a volume of Thoreau in your pocket, for 
he is, after all, master of the American out-of-doors; 
there is none like him! But then if you prefer to walk 
in another country you may tour England in delightful 
company with E. V. Lucas, or Ireland with Jane Barlow 
in her Irish Idyls, or listen to Seumas MacManus tell 

433 


the folk-tales of Donegal that he heard as a boy,— 
Donegal, loveliest part of all Ireland even when all of 
Killarney is seen and sung. 

“The sunny gospel of the wren” irradiates the poetry 
of Edwin Markham, and we are indebted to his gracious 
permission for many of the loveliest poems in this book. 
Learn the full poem on Lincoln of which a brief quota¬ 
tion is given on February 12. Professor Charles Eliot 
Norton says that to learn the best poems by heart is one 
of the best parts of an education; and if that be true, we 
may all be well educated. They may be your possession 
for life. 

Among the more readable biographies of modern women 
one of the best is that of Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, 
written by herself only four years before her death, The 
Story of a Pioneer. It is full of keen humor and of 
exciting incident from her pioneer experiences in the back- 
woods of Michigan fifty miles from a railroad. The story 
of how she struggled to.get her college education, and of 
the early days when women pioneered for suffrage, is full 
of deep significance to us as girls. I do not know what 
witty thing she would have said to have seen her birth¬ 
day honored side by side with that of St. Valentine. The 
quotation used is taken from her proclamation to the women 
of America, issued during the war when she served under 
appointment of President Wilson as the head of the 
Woman’s Committee of the Council of National Defense. 

Another biography to which your attention is called is 
The Life of Alice Freeman Palmer, by George Herbert 
Palmer. 

The poems of the late Joyce Kilmer are included 
here and some of Aline Kilmer, his wife, to introduce 

414 


you if you do not know them already to those of an¬ 
other American whose life was given in the Great War. 
Alan Seeger’s you may read as well, and those of the 
Englishman, Rupert Brooke, poems of the younger men 
of our day. Still another memorial volume of letters 
and fragments you might find and read is that of Padraic 
Pearse, the Irish gentleman and poet, who served as pro¬ 
visional president of the “Irish republic” for twelve 
days, and was executed in the Tower of London, May 3, 
1916. 

To honor the birthday of Laura E. Richards is to do 
honor to some one who seems to most American girls like 
a personal friend and so it is with Kate Douglas Wiggin. 
Perhaps everyone may not know that Laura E. Richards 
is the daughter of Julia Ward Howe, whose brilliant life 
written by her daughters, is of great interest. 

The famous Tajar took “death-defying life-leaps” 
when he heard a rumor that he was not to be considered 
eligible for a birthday! And because Jane Shaw Ward, 
his sponsor, was in China at the time this book was con¬ 
ceived, she was not to be consulted: therefore a birthday 
was awarded him, the basis of reasoning being that he 
would thus be saved immortal youth. Read the history of 
Tajar in “John Martin’s Annual for 1917”; and forget 
not that there is a penalty for reading Tajar and not 
telling his story to your younger sisters! 

March 1 is the turning point of spring; look for the 
“galleon clouds” by day, and for the stars of spring 
at night. Robert Louis Stevenson’s story of Will O’ 
the Mill contains the wonderful description of the stars 
quoted here; and the whole story you should surely know. 
This and other selections from David Balfour, Kidnapped, 

415 


Master of Ballantrae and Weir of Hermiston should 
send you to read in Stevenson and read, and read! A 
good plan is to read his letters through in the Colvin edi¬ 
tion, taking three a night. 

Probably the best way to enjoy Maeterlinck’s Blue 
Bird and its sequel, The Betrothal, is to read it with 
some friend aloud on afternoons when the family is well 
occupied in some other part of the house taking first one 
part and then another! 

The prose quotation from Robert Hugh Benson intro¬ 
duces you to a beautiful volume of sketches centered in 
theme around the gentle spirit of an old priest; they 
introduce you as well to the author, who was one of the 
famous sons of the late Archbishop of Canterbury, all 
three of whom were writers, Arthur Christopher Benson, 
essayist and Fellow at Cambridge, Robert, and E. F. Benson, 
the novelist. 

The four seasons of the year are marked with^a brief 
guide to the stars to be observed from the latitude 
of New York at about 10 in the evening or in other 
places to correspond. You will not be able to identify 
new constellations from these brief descriptions, but 
with a rotary star-chart, or such simple helps as Gar¬ 
rett Serviss* Round the Year with the Stars you may 
begin a new -acquaintance without much effort. One 
can hardly understand literature without this acquaint¬ 
ance. 

Several Indian poems have been selected to show the 
poet sense of the Indian; two rewritten by Alice Corbin, 
one by Mary Austin, and one taken from the poetry of 
the late Tekahionwake (E. Pauline Johnson), an Indian, 
daughter of the head chief of the Mohawk tribe. 

416 


A few wise spirits make merry for us in dull moments 
in this book; E. V. Lucas, and Edward Lear, whose 
nonsense rhymes are wiser than wisdom, and Father 
Tabb in his delectable bits from Quips and Quiddets. 
Were you to hunt further in these books you would 
learn of the Pobbles and of the Frying Pan who said, 
“It's all an awful delusion/' but most particularly 
of the Bad Child's Book of Beasts, by Hilaire Belloc, a 
book which gives badness its true and irresistible place. 
Dicky Swope is another story. He wanted to be in 
this book but ho wasn't allowed, so he threw the re¬ 
maining bits of pie-crust at the discomfited editor. 
Possibly you had better look him up in James Whitcomb 
Riley’s poem, called “The Impetuous Resolve." 

To read Lord Dunsany’s plays and stories is to find a 
very happy introduction into fairyland. Be sure to get 
an early chance to explore with the Old Man who Looks 
after Fairyland. There are A Dreamer's Tales, and A 
Book of Wonder, and others. But most of all know 
Peter Pan in Barrie’s Peter and Wendy, and The Little 
White Bird; in fact all of Barrie is too lovely not to 
know. Margaret Ogilvie is his description of his mother. 
Then there is Water Babies by Charles Kingsley, in a 
new and wonderfully beautiful edition illustrated by 
Jessie Willcox Smith. 

Ernest Ingersoll’s book, Nature's Calendar, you will 
find best fitted for a model in nature diary-making. Cer¬ 
tain sections have been adapted for your use in the months 
of April and October; the keeping of a nature-memorandum 
is as much fun as letter writing. Some one has said that, 
if one kept a bird-record, the friendly chickadee would 
appear on every page. 


417 


Apropos of the realms of fairy, you must select a collec¬ 
tion of fairy tales on which to grow old: every bookshelf 
should have at least one well worn volume (besides Pil¬ 
grim’s Progress, of course.) 

“O tales of ogre, knight and elf! 

You make a rainbow on our shelf. 

Wide store of mirth and magic arts, 

You light the sunshine in our hearts! 

They are the keys to wizard wiles, 

The guide-books to enchanted isles. 

The grammars whence we understand 

The tongue that’s talked in Fairyland.” 

Sir John Lucas. 

But you must remember that the people of the faery 
are to be treated with understanding; in Ireland they call 
them “the gentry.” Still, be it said on the theme of 
respect, that the most gentle of modern fairy-makers, 
James M. Barrie, says that “Peter, who understood them 
best, often cuffed them.” 

In medieval days, to feel the stir of spring was to feel 
the inclination to go on pilgrimage; to see strange lairds 
and serve, as well, old and beloved saints. Therefore, 
the consecration service for such a pilgrimage is given in 
the month of April, the pilgrim’s month. It is a service 
dedicating the scrip and staff of any pilgrim, and taken 
from the old Sarum missal. Why be too modern for a 
pilgrimage? Bather “take this scrip to be worn as the 
badge and habit of thy pilgrimage.” 

Apropos of making pilgrimage, you will be glad of 

418 


The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame on your 
journey. Ratty and Moley and Mr. Badger are irresistible 
comrades in spring; the spring pilgrimage in the canary- 
colored cart is after one’s own heart,—in moods of spring- 
fever. 

We celebrate the feast of the most human of saints 
in April, that of St. Catherine of Siena. Read her life 
done into a novel by Vida Scudder, The Disciple of a 
Saint, also a biography of her by Edmund Gardiner. 

Still another saint, a girl of fourteen, was St. Eliza¬ 
beth of Hungary, whose life is written in charming form 
by William Canton. It was told of her how her apron 
of provisions for the poor turned into roses. 

These are days when “Nature is in her beryl apron,” as 
Emily Dickinson would say. There is not room for all the 
poets of spring, but here is a sheaf of them. And quaint¬ 
est most whimsical of all, Emily Dickinson herself! “To 
her niece and nephews she was of fairy lineage.” When 
you read her poems and diaries you will see how charac¬ 
teristic are the poems included here. Her niece says of 
her, “She was not daily bread. She was star-dust.” 

Among the collections of poems that you should own, one 
would put a delightful collection made for children, by 
E. V. Lucas called “A Book of Verse for Children.” 
Then there are the charming ones, “The Little Book of 
Modern Verse,” and “The Second Book of Modern Verse,” 
both collections made by Jessie Rittenhouse. Still another 
good collection to own is “High Tide” and “The Melody 
of Earth , 17 made by Mrs. Waldo Richards. The best 
outdoor picnic-in-your-pocket collection is “The Open 
Road,” edited by E. V. Lucas. All these are within 
reach of any girl. 


419 


But to know the poets you must take down their own 
hooks, many can not be represented here; Fannie Sterns 
Davis, and Sara Teasdale, Bobert Frost and Vacliel Lindsay 
and Alfred Noyes; Kipling, too, and Edwin Arlington 
Eobinson, and many others. Josephine Preston Peabody’s 
“Singing Leaves,” is full of exquisite things to own. 

The day that commemorates St. Columba, June 9, needs 
some explanation to make the day live; some time you will 
perhaps make pilgrimage to the small island of Iona in 
the western Hebrides off the Scottish coast, there to learn 
more of him. He is particularly a part of this book 
because the cover-design is taken from one of the old 1 
tombstones in the burying ground where King Macbeth and 
many of the old Scottish kings lie buried. Many old 
crosses stood there as memorials of that first Christianizing 
of Scotland and England. 

The “Bune of Hospitality,” inserted on July 9, is also 
from this period. You will find many Gaelic runes and 
charms of early Celtic days in “Carmina Gadelica,” col¬ 
lected by Alexander Carmichael. These come from the 
same rock-ribbed islands made famous by Stevenson in 
‘ 1 Treasure Island ’ 1 and 11 Kidnapped. * 7 Here the old 
folk-customs obtain; folk nod in greeting to the new moon, 
turn over a piece of silver in their pockets for good-luck, 
and raise their bonnets to the beauty of the morning. The 
poem of Fiona Macleod (William Sharp), “St. Chris¬ 
topher,” is moulded under the same spirit. 

We celebrate still another saint on July 25 who is said 
to have been a giant in stature and to have borne the 
Christ-child over the raging stream where he was ferryman, 
thus his name Christo-fero. 

The magic of September is planned with somewhat 

420 


of a scliool-going sense, as you see. You will follow 
with understanding the good advice of President Mac- 
Cracken of Yassar College, and President Thwing of 
Western Reserve. The year begins to take on more seri¬ 
ous aspects: 

“Now all are seated at their book; 

Nor does the one at t'other look, 

Nor can you hear a whispering sound, 

Such perfect stillness reigns around." ????? 

(These significant marks are added by the impertinent 
editor!) 

The “magic" for November was taken from an old 
document published by Roger Williams concerning his work 
among the American Indians in New England, 1643. The 
idea has special meaning; for the month of November 
ushered in by the Feast of All Saints, begins in its spiritual 
significance to light the altar fires of Christmas. The eve 
of this feast, All Hallows E'en, has many a quaint tradi¬ 
tion, but the customs of the Eve of All Souls are less well 
known; for on this night the spirits of the dead are said in 
the old legends to be allowed to visit earth again, and must 
have a bite after their long journey and a chair pulled 
to the fire. Those who love the significance of the old cus¬ 
toms could well keep such a feast, and on the Eve of All 
Souls, light the candles of their remembrance. 

The customs of Christmas are familiar,—the candle in the 
window, the Yule log, the Christmas creche with its tiny 
figures representing the Nativity, the Christmas play, the 
carol singers. But the newest custom of all is perhaps 
nearer to the heart of the Christmas spirit than any other, 

421 


that of “making our Christmas within ,” as Angela Morgan 
puts it. 

As the year swings on its hinges again, and you begin 
another journey, we must all stop a moment and say with 
Tiny Tim, 

“God bless us everyone .” 


4 22 


ACKNOWLEDGMENT 


To the following publishers and individual owners of 
copyrights thanks are due for their kind permission to use 
selections from the volumes indicated below. 

To the American Tract Society for selections from “Bees 
in Amber,” by John Oxenham. 

To the Atlantic Monthly Company for selections from 
“The Atlantic Classics,” especially from Maurice Barres 
and from E. S. Martin; also for a selection from ‘ 1 The 
Contributors Club”; for “The Bribe,” by Jean Kenyon 
Mackenzie, and “Jane Addams,” by Ruth Comfort Mitchell. 

To W. A. Butterfield for lines from “Mademoiselle 
Miss. 1 ’ 

To Burnes and Oates, Ltd., for permission to use “The 
Shepherdess,” by Alice Meynell and for “The Folded 
Flock,” by Wilfrid Meynell. 

To the Century Company for selections from “The Life 
and Diaries of Lewis Carroll”; for “Whenever a Little 
Child Is Born,” by Agnes L. Carter, published in St. 
Nicholas Songs; for a quotation from “The World I Live 
In,” by Helen Keller. 

To Thomas Y. Crowell for selections from “America the 
Beautiful and Other Poems,” by Katharine Lee Bates, and 
for selections from “Poems,” by Sophie Jewett. 

To Dodd, Mead and Company for quotations from 
“Water Babies,” by Charles Kingsley; for a quotation 
from “The Betrothal,” by Maurice Maeterlinck. 

To George H. Doran Company for selections from “The 
Dreamers,” by Theodosia Garrison; “Drums and Fifes,” 
by Hermann Hagedorn; “Candles that Burn,” by Aline 
Kilmer; “Poems, Essays and Letters,” by Joyce Kilmer, 

423 


edited by Kobert Cortes Holliday, and from “ Trees and 
Other Poems /’ by Joyce Kilmer; “Life of Mary Slessor 
of Calabar ,’’ edited by William P. Livingstone; “For¬ 
titude, ” by Hugh Walpole. 

To Doubleday Page and Company for selections from 
‘ ‘ Adventures in Friendship, ’ ’ “ The Friendly Eoad, ’ f 
“Great Possessions ,’’ by David Grayson; “Dream Boats/’ 
by Dugald Stewart Walker; “Collected Works of -Walt 
Whitman. ’ * 

To Duffield and Company for selections from “The 
Frozen Grail and Other Poems /* by Elsa Barker; for 
ratifying the permission given by Mrs. Sharp for several 
selections from Fiona Macleod (William Sharp), especially 
from “The Wayfarer.” 

To E. P. Dutton and Company for selections from 
“Fairy Gold,” by Katharine Lee Bates; “Chant of Love 
for England and Other Poems/’ by Helen Gray Cone; 
“A Student in Arms/’ by Donald Hankey; “The Spires of 
Oxford and Other Poems /’ by Winnifred M. Letts; “The 
Temple, a Book of Prayers/’ by W. E. Orchard; “The 
Old Huntsman and Other Poems/ , by Siegfried Sassoon; 
“ Immanence/’ by Evelyn Underhill. 

To The Four Seas Company for selections from “ Now¬ 
adays/ ’ by Lord Dunsany. 

To the Gorham Press for selections from “Sun and 
Saddle Leather / 9 by Badger Clark. 

To Harper and Brothers for permission to make adap¬ 
tations from “A Year with the Stars/* by Garrett P. 
Serviss and from “Nature’s Calendar / 9 by Ernest Inger- 
soll; for brief quotations from “The Terrible Meek,” 
by Charles Eann Kennedy; and from “Mr. Dooley.” 

424 


To Henry Holt and Company for a poem from “Wild 
Earth,’’ by Padraic Colum. 

To Houghton, Mifflin Company for selections from ‘ ‘ Col¬ 
lected Works,” of Thomas Bailey Aldrich; “The Heart 
of the Road,” “Rose of the World,” and “The Shoes that 
Danced,” by Anna Hempstead Branch; “Afternoons in 
April,” by Grace Hazard Conkling; “Children of Light,” 
and “Masque of Sibyls,” by Florence Converse; “A Little 
Freckled Person,” by Mary Carolyn Davies; “Poems,” by 
Ralph Waldo Emerson; “The Great Remembrance,” by 
Richard Watson Gilder; “Happy Ending,” by Louise Imo¬ 
gen Guiney; “At the Beautiful Gate,” by Lucy Larcom; 
for “Of Wounds and Sore Defeat,” from “The Fire 
Bringer,” by William Vaughn Moody; “The Singing 
Leaves,” by Josephine Preston Peabody; for several selec¬ 
tions from the works of Henry David Thoreau. 

To Mitchell Kennerley for selections from “The Quiet 
Singer and Other Poems,” by Charles Hanson Towne. 

To Alfred A. Knopf for a poem from “Mushrooms,” 
by Alfred Kreymborg. 

To the John Lane Company for selections from “The 
Lonely Dancer,” by Richard Le Gallienne; “Forward 
March,” by Angela Morgan; “Later Lyrics,” by John 
Bannister Tabb. 

To Little, Brown and Company for selection from 
“Little Women,” by Louisa M. Alcott, and for a selection 
from her diary; for poems from “Poems; Series 1, 2 and 
3, ” by Emily Dickinson; ‘ 1 The Single Hound, ’ ’ by Emily 
Dickinson; for selected paragraphs from “The Golden 
Windows,” by Laura E. Richards; for “Uphill,” from 
the poems of Christina Rossetti. 

425 


To Longmans Green and Company for selections from 
“ Songs of Childhood, ’ ’ by Walter Ramal. 

To Lothrop, Lee and Company for selection from “Child 
Songs of Cheer,” by Evaleen Stein. 

To the Musson Book Company for a selection from ‘ ‘ Flint 
and Feather,” by E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake). 

To the Outlook Company for a quotation from “Five 
Ways to Fairyland,” by Mary Elizabeth Rodhouse. 

To Isaac Pitman and Sons for a quotation from “The 
Light Invisible,” by Robert Hugh Benson. 

To Charles Scribner's Sons for selections from “Peter 
and Wendy,” by James M. Barrie; “Songs and Poems,” 
by John Jay Chapman; “The Freelands,” by John Gals¬ 
worthy; “Path Flower,” by Olive Tilford Dargan; “The 
Wind in the Willows,” by Kenneth Grahame; “Open 
Country,” by Maurice Hewlett; “Poetical Works of J. G. 
Holland”; several selections from Robert Louis Stevenson; 
for “Hope,” by Captain Cyril Hawken published in Scrib¬ 
ner’s Magazine. 

To Small, Maynard and Company for selections from 
“Echoes from Vagabondia,” “Songs from Vagabondia,” 
and “Last Songs from Vagabondia,” by Bliss Carman; 
“Quips and Quidetts,” by John Bannister Tabb. 

To Frederick A. Stokes for selections from “The Irish 
Book of Poetry,” by Alfred Percivale Graves; “Poems,” 
by Theodore Maynard. 

To Frederick Warne and Company for quotations from 
“Nonsense Songs,” by Edward Lear. 

To The Congregationalist for permission to reprint a 
poem by Patton Beard. 

To Good Housekeeping Company for permission to reprint 
“My Garden,” by Grace Lowry Daly; for a quotation from 

426 


“Prayer of a Lonely Girl in the City,” by Margaret Wid- 
demer; quotations from “A Little Talk to Girls,” by 
Henry Noble MaeCracken. 

To Yale University Press for a poem from “Blue 
Smoke,” by Karle Wilson Baker. 


To authors who were gracious enough to allow the 
reprinting of poems of which they hold the copyrights, we 
are especially indebted: 

To Alice Corbin for permission to use two of her poems, 
“The Wind” and “Listening” (from Chippewa transla¬ 
tions by Frances Dinsmore). 

To Mary Carolyn Davies for permission to use part of 
“The Chinquepin Trail.” 

To Hamlin Garland for several of his poems from 
“Prairie Songs.” 

To Angela Morgan for permission to reprint selections 
from 11 The Hour Has Struck, ’ 7 and from ‘ ‘ Utterance, 77 
of which she holds the copyrights, and which are published 
by the John Lane Company. 

To Oliver Herford for a selection from “The Kitten’s 
Garden of Verses.” 

To Edwin Markham for permission to reprint selections 
from 1 i Lincoln and Other Poems, ” “ The Man with the 
Hoe and Other Poems, ’ 7 and ‘ * The Shoes of Happiness , 7 7 
of which he holds the copyrights. 

To David Morton for a poem reprinted in The Sun. 

To ^Robert Howard Russell for a selection from Finley 
Peter Dunne. 

To Charles Francis Thwing for a quotation from “A 
Father to His Son Entering College, ’ ’ printed by Platt and 
Peck. 


427 


To Kate Douglas Wiggin for several selections from 
“ Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm,” and “Further Adven¬ 
tures of Rebecca,” of which Mrs. Riggs holds the copy¬ 
rights. 

Further thanks are due to Mary Antin, Mabel Cratty, 
Emily Goding, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Laura Stratton 
Porter, Jane Shaw Ward, for brief quotations. 


428 













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